A Moment of Silence for Minion and Maude

The house is looking a lot nicer than it use to, and almost all of the boxes are unpacked (most of what's left are books). We finally got a fridge! We were both very excited about that. It is so nice to have a full size freezer and a shelf for milk, unlike the mini fridge we bought to hold us over until we could afford a real one. Now the mini fridge just sits in the bedroom and holds drinks for Jeff and myself. :)

We also finally bought a washing machine. It's going to be delivered today! Now all we need is our friend Emily's dryer, and we'll have a real home!

Jeff is teaching me how to program in php. It's really easy, and pretty fun. I've always been interested in programming, but I've never really committed myself to learning it. We're having "classes" Mon, Wed, and Fri while Jeff waters the lawn. Maybe I'll get good enough to be hired at a good paying job. I'm crossing my fingers.

We put the rats down last week. It was really sad, and it was really drawn out (the visit to the vet's, not their deaths- I hope). I had already gotten myself into the mindset that neither rat was coming home because a tumor removal surgery really isn't worth it for a pet who's average life span is 2.5 years, and there's a really good chance the tumors would come back anyway. I just wanted to let the rats go together before life got too miserable for them. Jeff came with me and he held my hand while the doctor kept us waiting for an hour, and then went on for another hour about surgery and people who have had multiple surgeries on their rats and how she would prepare the rats for surgery if we wanted it... It dragged on and on. She eventually asked if we wanted an estimate, and even though I knew we weren't going to get the surgery, I said yes just to get her to shut up about it. She left the room, and we didn't see her again. 15 minutes later, a tech came in with the estimates and left us alone to think about it. I started crying. Jeff eventually had to go up to the front desk and tell them we just wanted to put the rats down.

Before we went to the vet's, I was more than prepared to take the bodies home and bury them in the garden, but that visit had turned what should have been a quick and tearful goodbye into a two and half long lecture on other people who didn't murder their beloved pets, and I just wanted to get out of there. So we left Minion and Maude in their traveling cage in the exam room, and left.

For those of you who met my rats, I hope you got to meet them before they got tumors. They were so much happier and hyper back then. I'm really going to miss them.

This is the only other picture of the rats that I have, so please forgive my foot.

P.S.- What do you do with boxes after a move? Do you just throw them away? It seems like such a waste, but I have so many.