Operation Freedom

I had a visitor arrive on Thursday night.  It came in the form of lots of squeaking noises and occasional thumping on my window.  I figured that it was a small animal trapped in my window well, but it was already dark, so I couldn't see anything.  I looked again in the morning; still no sign.  Oh, good I thought.  It must've gotten out.  Come Friday evening, when I got home from work around 6, I looked out the window and saw this:

First things first, I figured the poor little fella was thirsty so I gave him some water and some apple and tomato pieces, lest he perish while I formulated a "Free Clive" plan (I thought I should call him something other than "stupid little bunny").  I called my parents house, thinking that this didn't really qualify as an emergency so I shouldn't call the "After Hours Emergency" maintenance number.  No one was home so I was on my own.  There were some feeble attempts to reach out and grab him, but they were unsuccessful, and soon it was getting dark again.

My folks called back around 10. I told them each the predicament separately. My dad said "You have to get it out of there right away, it'll be thirsty, wear gloves if you touch it, and don't name it" and my mom said "Oh, cute, they like oats, and what do you call it". Apart from being a little offended that my dad didn't think I'd be clever enough to give it water, I was very amused by their opposing reactions. Their plans for freeing Clive, however, all revolved around me owning a chair or ladder. Turns out, I own neither of those things. So we hung up and I told Clive he'd have to wait another night.  I supplied more food and suggested he find a comfy spot on the rocks.

Morning came, and with it hope.

Plan One:  Cartoon style trail of food leading into a box.

Clive was like, "Bitch, please."

You might have to click to get a good look at Clive's face.  He was super unimpressed...

Plan Two:  Removed screen, climbed out and fashioned a ramp.

That freaked Clive right out, and he went and cowered by my window.

Five minutes later he was still there, so I opened the window to nudge him towards his escape route, but poor Clive resisted any type of movement, trapped in metaphorical headlights.  Since the opportunity was there, I grabbed it.  And him.

Clearly, despite my father's advice, I did not wear gloves whilst handling the ickle baby bunny.  On a brief tangent, bunnies are soft.  I understand that.  I don't understand how you can look at a little guy like Clive and say "I'm going to remove its skin and make it into mittens!  And let's cut off its feet for good luck while we're at it!"  But I digress.

So I tucked Clive in a box with a slice of tomato (a gesture of good will, as he was somewhat startled by his new environment), and we headed off to Como Park.  After a good 20 minutes of walking around looking for lots of undergrowth for him to hide in, I found this little spot. 

And without so much as a thank you, there he went.

Good luck in the park, Clive.

Also, the hotel had a pool.

The EKC 6th Annual Summer Mehaber was this past weekend, so a pretty solid chunk of my immediate family was in town. An excellent opportunity, because my sister's kids are my most interesting photo subjects. With the possible exception of this man, who I creepered pictures of, just because of his outfit...

He may be committing several fashion crimes, but Dude is prepared, dammit.

It was a lovely celebration of Ethiopian culture, with dancing and really good food. Except instead of really good food, I had a corn dog.



OK, the corn dog was pretty good too. That afternoon, while the children slept, my parents and I went to Bad Teacher, which was incredibly stupid and hilarious. At one point, Justin Timberlake's character was very earnestly talking about eating in an Ethiopian restaurant and said "They finally got their own cuisine! It's progress!"







The Mehaber was followed up the next day by a trip to Como Town, which the children seemed to find infinitely more enjoyable.

This boy is a total dreamboat.

I enjoyed it there, too.






You might think this post has a lot of pictures. Bear in mind that, of the day and a half that these 15 photos document, there are another 507 that I didn't post.

Independence

If I ever think of anything good and meaningful to write about this past weekend I will, but for now, here's a shit-ton of pictures. I think they can do most of the talking.

The Mint Condition

I had mint in my fridge that was going limp. What's a girl to do?

...

Oh, yeah. This.
















On a related note, I think I need a new whisk...

All That Glitters

So, I walk into the Toddler room and Miss Terri is alone with 21 kids. This is bad. The ratio is 1/7, not 1/21. However, I do think that going into the bathroom to change some diapers and leaving 18 toddlers to whatever they wanted to was a mistake. For example:



What you can't tell from this picture is that, in addition to dumping the giant canister of glitter on the floor, they had also turned on the faucet in the kitchen and flooded half of the room. Also, there are no pictures of Carson soaking up the water with a pale peach ink pad and wringing it out over his head. And there are no pictures of Xander lying on his back kicking his feet in the middle of the giant puddle overtaking the room. Also, there aren't pictures of the gold sparkles all over the inside of Max's diaper.

And there are no pictures of me mopping while I'm laughing so hard that I can't breathe. I like my job.

Caesar's Palace

One assumes that immediately after removing the plastic safety seal from a bottle of newly purchased salad dressing, the lid would be tightly screwed on. Because of this naturally drawn conclusion, one also assumes that shaking the bottle to mix the contents would be an appropriate action. This is not always the case, as evidenced by this:






One also assumes that everybody needs a Caesar Dressing bath now and then.