I haven't had much chance to use the computer these last couple of weeks, with my folks here.

They leave on Monday afternoon ... can't believe how quickly this month has gone. It's going to feel very peculiar going back to our old routines, and the house is going to feel very empty.

Empty of people, anyway. We seem to be acquiring more and more creatures. Soph got some seamonkeys at Christmas time and we finally got around to hatching them last week. My God that is a staggeringly clever marketing trick, to claim that utterly boring miniscule translucent shrimp things are actually cuddly crowned monkeys. Wonder if their advertising people work for the Bush administration. Her tadpoles also arrived last week, shipped in test-tubes via UPS first class, poor little things. I had assumed that they'd be normal little wiggly black tadpoles, the sort one sees in ponds, but no, they are hugely repulsive fat speckled things that just lie around on the bottom of their tank, with their snaky poppy eyes bulging. They give the whole family the shudders. Sophie initially named them Charlotte and Chloe but they were quickly renamed by popular consensus and are now known as Ugh and Bugh.

I need to plan stuff to keep me busy next week. I know that I need to have so much to do that I have absolutely no time to stop, think, and fall into a depressed slump.