All creatures great and small. ( pics added)

We have a pet. Yes, our family, you know, with me in it. I am not an animal lover, I don't understand people who love animals the same as people, more than people even.
I remember a boyfriend once telling me that they had vets bills over a £1.000. I pointed out that he could have bought 2 or 3 pedigree NEW dogs with that. He showed me the error of my ways. I still don't get it though.
So, Seth has been longing for a pet and way back at the beginning of the year we said that maybe, when he was 9, he could have a tortoise ( because I figured even I could cope with exercising a tortoise.) Bless his heart he said " Oh, I will never forget this wonderful day even when I am very old." The back of my brain is tickling, I think that is excitement, is it?" Indeed it was. So, he started to save and he researched everything he could about Tortoises. And he waited.
As his birthday approached he started to waver ( yeay! That was the plan, I was sure he would change his mind in all that time ) however his desire for a pet was every bit as strong, that didn't wane at all.
He decided that he wanted a lizard, or a bearded dragon, or something. He saved an impressive amount of money for a little chap and he also found a vivarium at the car boot sale, a heater / lamp and he was ready. Very ready.
Darn it.
Eventually, because he is my son, he decided that he would buy a Green Anole, for £9.99, a practise lizard because £60 for a breaded dragon is a steep price when you are nine and he wasn't sure he would be able to keep it alive.
Greeny came home on monday evening. Oh we have been so excited about him, he has a reptile ladder and he has plants and rocks, flat rocks, bark, water mister thingamajiggers. It is the grandest £9.99 lizard you ever did see.
I think these boys are going to love it to death.
They poke it and stroke it and pick it up and look at it, they watch it and stare at it and the light goes on and off and on and off and I am NEARLY~ DEMENTED.
I don't like animals but I truly hate poor treatment of animals. If you have a pet, you look after it.
I have lost count of the times I have said, since 5pm on monday, " Wash your hands, with HOT soapy water" and " Leave that lizard alone, it does not like being picked up" also " PUT IT BACK" ( that to Sophie at 3am when she was quite drunk and very loud and I saw she had it in her hand, in her room)
This evening, I went to get the bath ready for the boys and good heavens, as I opened the bathroom door, there they were, all 3 of them in the bath already and there, sitting on the side of the bath, in a takeaway sort of tupperware box, was the lizard, looking very sorry for itself.
"He LOVES swimming" Said Seth.
"No, he doesn't" said I.
"But he was doing it! I held his head above the water so he wouldn't drown and he was SWIMMING!"
"This lizard is going back into his vivarium, under the warm light, you are not to open his door at all tonight. AT ALL, even ONCE. You will kill this little creature and if you do I will be furious. If you do not listen to me and you touch this lizard, if you do not hear me when I say that it does NOT like being handled, it does NOT like swimming, it likes warmth and to be left alone, if you don't understand that then you are clearly not old enough to have a pet and I will take him back to the shop and explain that you are cruel and will not be keeping it. Do you hear me? All of you? "
"yes"
"do you understand me?"
"yes"
"all of you?"
"yes"
"then you are not deaf and you are not stupid so if you touch it again this evening you are just being disobedient and you will be very sorry."
Isaac and Elijah lasted 30 minutes and they went to bed without a story at 7pm.
Seth ( as far as I know,) resisted the temptation to teach Greeny to , oh who knows? Sky dive with the mini parachute out of the bedroom window perhaps.





I found Elijah on the shed roof again today, he said he was searching for flat rocks, and he had found some too, I am sure the rocks weren't on the roof, I am loathe to investigate too deeply for fear of discovering he had shimmied up the side of someone's house and pilfered the lead off their roof. Little bugger.
( am kidding, no-one uses lead for roofing anymore, cheap that's what we are these days)
You know, I am sure my other boys didn't do this stuff, they were nice children and helpful, well behaved and thoughtful, asleep by 6pm every night and never ever got dirty. Perhaps my memory is poor, whatever, they get it from H.
I am neurotic about this tiny creature who is one of God's creatures after all.
I check it often and I mist his vivarium. I want him to be warm and comfy, fed and happy and I am pretty sure that we will never be a family of many pets. My heart can't stand it.
I'm too tired to write much more this evening, sad I know, I am always so riveting to read.
Tomorrow, maybe I will tell you about the nightmare quantity of flies in the laundry room, as long as I can write about it in the past tense, right now they seem to be sunbathing on and around the blue fly killing lamp I put in there to KILL them.
WTH is going on in this house, mice and smells and flies and ...do green anoles eat flies? That'd be so handy wouldn't it?

I don't know where they get it from.

Tomorrow, Jordan, Mel and Joshua are going to Turkey they are headed off to visit Nana Turkey who lives there, you know in Turkey which is what she is called Nana Turkey ( or Turkey Nana or...if you are Sophie, that woman with a turkey neck, because she is neither overly keen on Turkey Nana or tactful)

On tuesday Dan is flying to Poland, to visit a friend that he loves and misses, who lives in Poland but used to live and work where Dan lives and works.

How did my kids get to be so keen on travel? They love it and I am sure they don't get it from me. I love being with people I love, I love to see people and experience their lives and see where they live but I really, really hate travelling. Whenever I see or hear people talk about how if they win the lottery they would travel and see the world I don't get it, I think to myself how I would pay for everyone to come and see me in my new house RIGHT HERE!

I am thrilled to love where I am so much. It is a blessing to want to be right where I am, I have experienced living in places that make me sad, Germany and America are both great places, so much going for them, many advantages to being there...and I was miserable in both countries, to the point where now, now I am home and feeling somewhat ashamed that I perhaps didn't take full advantage of the wonderful things those countries offered, while I lived there. ( I was so overwhelmed by the 'what am I doing here, what if I DIE here, will I be an old lady here and OH NO what if my children forget I am English and they just say things like ' Oh grandma used to live in England once' and don't understand that I am ENGLISH and I love ENGLAND and I belong HERE.

As for Germany, I just hated it and was young and homesick and 2 years seemed such an eternity and I wanted to GO HOME. I do regret that because I could have made so much more of that time. I was married to the first one who was no help and certainly didn't do anything to make the time more interesting and I was also pregnant, excuses excuse I know. Germany is very clean, what more can I say about having lived there, I had a neighbour called Rita Anita, who was very blond and very loud and told everyone she was called Rita Anita ( or was it Anita Rita?!?)

I am making up for being a snot about America, I did love so much about being there ( the weather for a start, oh I never complained about Californian weather, I love it. ) I love eating out there, shopping, I adore the hodge podge of people in California, anything goes I never got tired of looking at the people and listening to them. Utah was not for me, oh my goodness I am way to hard faced to listen to all that 'darling' and 'how ARE you dear?' I have to admit that it all seemed so insincere to me and I found myself actually TELLING people how I was..that stopped them in their tracks I can tell you. Also, cold, so COLD in the winter, nope Utah was so not for me.

Anyway I am making up for being a snot because now I go back ( even though I hate flying) and I am happy to be there and have fun and behave with gratitude because I know I am coming home, where I belong and where I sigh and relax and say 'That's better'.

I think America forgives me for not liking it a whole lot when I thought I would never be able to leave.

Dan travels a lot, to places that just wouldn't even enter my mind to go to, like Greenland and where was that place he went to last time....somewhere all cold and without good shops...where DOES he get THAT from? Oh he went to lapland once and I don't think he even went to see Santa.

I don't think there can be too much in Poland if I'm honest, if it was that great they would stay there and I think that most Polish people are here, in my actual town. Every supermarket now sells Polish food so many poles live here......that's all I shall say on the matter, except trust my son to really like the one and only Polish person that is still actually in Poland. If I say anything else it may look as though I am politically inclined which is ridiculous.

I suppose they could get it from the first one, who travels he has a stupid amount of foreign holidays each year....which could annoy me if I let it, seeing as we had our honeymoon in BIRMINGHAM at his parents house, looking after their smelly dog while they had a holiday. Bitter? Me? Why of course.

I love that my kids are adventurous and do things that I have been afraid to do.

HEY! You know what, I just thought, I may have been afraid but when I think of it, I have never NOT done something because I was afraid, I mean look, I up sticks and moved to America with 3 kids and a suitcase each, how scary was that? I did it. I a'int no scaredy cat!

I am beginning to see the little boys showing who they will be as they grow older, I think Seth will head back to the US if he has the chance, he is so sweet right now, he's going through a great phase, funny and beginning to listen and think a bit more, less ready to fight about everything ( and oh what a joy that is to me!) he is very, very funny and quick witted and totally unshy in every way. I love his little face, squiffy eye, such green eyes, tiny face and curly hair. Like a pixie. I look forward to seeing how he grows and what he will become. I don't doubt that he will achieve whatever he sets out to be because it doesn't occur to him that it will be any other way.

Being a mum is amazing, every day different and none ever dull ( monotonous, yes, dull, no.) I think I'll keep this job.