Coach Vikkie had her baby last night. She's a teensy lil thing named Gertrude, but we call her Gertie. She was born on the day Haunted Mansion Holiday opened, so we also call her our little 1000th ghost. She's so cute.

I can't stop thinking about friggen Disneyland. G'lord. Never before has a week gone by slower. There are only four days to go and I'm certain I will go crazy before then.

My sanity rests soley in the gloved hands of a mouse until Tuesday. Sob.

-Chi <3

Shamu is so friggen happy here. He sleeps until about 7:00 pm which is nice, since I don't get home until five anyway. So I get to enjoy mah lil baby runnin around. I made him a little hamster piñata yesterday. I took a cardboard tube and squeezed the end shut, and then put his favorite treats; yogurt drops, waffles, corn, and sunflower seeds; and then I taped it to the top of his cage. (The toy was designed for cages with bars, so I had to improvise.)

He LOVES it. It's been about a day and he's already chewed the heck out of it and gotten a few yogurt drops out. I can't wait for him to get all of it so I can make another one. He loves it so much. I'm also gonna figure out how to make him a swing even though his tank doesn't have a top. (Maybe I can hang it from the roof of my desk hutch, or maybe on the corners of his tank or something.)

I can't wait for Sissy to see him.

Btw, I hate people. Poor Sissy hates her job because people suck. They really do. I wanna go up and give her a hug tonight or tomorrow. My sissy rules, and as the oh-so-smart political science major who has worked for both Senator McCain AND the Governer, she deserves better.

Hmm...

Sissy for President in 08!!!
A stronger sissy for a stronger America

-Chi <3

*sigh*

Okay, never mind. I feel crummy again.

Don't get me wrong, I love Shamu with every fiber of my being, and will for the rest of his life. Shamu really has done a good job patching up some of the pain.

There are some holes that can't be patched up, ya know?

Shamu's made everything so much easier, and I'ms so happy I bought him. I just still feel lousy. Positively lousy.

Shamu's made me feel better and will be a good lil buddy, but it'll take me some time to get over this.

I've never seen anything die. Ever. Let alone in person. It's a heavy thing to carry with ya for a while. Good lord I miss that hamster. I'm gonna have nightmares of him waking up in his shoebox in the ground for days.

Thank you for buying me Shamu, Momma.

-Chi <3

Mu will always be my first baby. For the grumpy little picky eater he was, he still loved me, and that's what counted. Mu was fighter too. He lived through a heat stroke, cold, escaping his cage three times, the stupid girls at cheer camp stuffing him under my pillow and nearly sitting on him, and living in my room for two days with a stupid person clapping and screaming at him. He held on through everything and I loved him so much for it.

Momma took me out to get a new hamster.

He's a beautiful little two-week old short-haired named Shamu. He's a grey-ish brown and white color; VERY pretty eyes. He's really young, so he'll prolly be my buddy through college too. I was thinking of getting a dwarf hamster at first. ADORABLE little things, and the signs all said they were VERY social. Every store clerk told me just the opposite though O_o Said that they bite and take a awhile to tame. I even wanted to see one and it bit the poor clerk three times.

So I asked to see Shamu. Lil guy contently running in his wheel and graciously sharing it with the male hamster next to him. (Most males hamsters will just GO AT IT with each other, so that was a good sign.) When they put him in the box and let me pet him, he was so calm. He would follow my hand wherever it went. He was very social, and as it was, no one had really handled him before. So that was a VERY good sign. When we came back again, he was still in his wheel. So apparently he loves his excercise XD

In fact, now as I type this, lil Shamu has already gotten used to his new home, and is running like a maniac in his wheel.

I still miss Mu, and it still makes me cry to think about him. But Shamu's made it a lot easier to breathe.

Lots of love to my new beginning, Shamu "The Killer Hamster" Kunzaki.

-Chi <3

My little man is dead. September 14th 2006 at about 11:43 in the morning, I watched Mu take his last breath.

My lil hamster outlived his species' life expectancy by two years.

I noticed last night that he was flopped down in front of his nest, looking kinda flat. I called my parents in and they came out and said he was still breathing, so I came in to see. Mu was just barely raising his chest on one side, only taking a breath about every nine seconds. I didn't really expect him to live through the night.

I stayed home from school today (it was a half day anyway) so I could be here to take care of him. When I woke up, he was still breathing. He hadn't moved from his spot at all though. I found out that if you barely touch the back of his spine, you can feel his heartbeat, so that was good. I kept checking fr his heartbeat, but I was really nervous because his body had like, no substance. You could feel his organs and his bones by barely touching his fur. But he was still breathing and his heart was still going at least. About an hour ago, I came in to check on him and he was twitching his legs a bit and climbed out of his food bowl. After he stopped twitching, he just went lifeless again and started lurching his head forward occasionaly. It didn't look like breathing, but his heart was still going, so I assumed he was alright.

I came in to check on him about fifteen minutes ago. Good timing apparently. Mu took a BIIIIG breath, held it for a second, and then slowly deflated it. I waited for maybe three minutes and never saw a breath. I felt the back of his spine and his heartbeat was gone. I know it may sound a lil silly to whoever reads this that I'm so emotional over a hamster. But I love animals so much. It's one thing to hear about an animal suffering and dying. It's another thing to experience it.

So my baby boy is gone after a good four year lifespan. (With a few months on top of that, he was in the shop a lil before I got him, after all.)

So I'd like to get a new one as soon as possible to get my mind off it.

And no. Despite what everyone keeps asking, he won't be "Mu Jr." Seriously, why in the heck would I do that? Way too sad. No, I'm actually thinking of looking for a black and white one and naming it Shamu or something like that. Hopefully tonight since mom's going out anyway. Maybe Dad'll run me down there real quick.

I loved ya, baby. Keep Steve Irwin and MomMom company up there.

Lots of love to Hamutaro "Mu" Kunzaki

-Chi <3

It sucks, but on the other hand, it's a happy ending. Steve was never afraid of breaking his ankle, so he got to dance life for as long as the music would play.

Mom was looking at a video of Steve tonight. A crocodile had just died and he was crying some serious genuine tears. I dunno, as an animal lover, I was really touched by it. Crazy as I usually thought he was, he was one of the first people to convince me at a young age that animals possesed a soul.

There are very few people out there who understand animals. Very few people who see them as equals and mourn for their deaths and the like. Very VERY few people realize that animals have souls like us. It's heartning in a world full of poachers and animal abusers to know that there are people out there who care for them just as much.

The world needs more Steve Irwins.

-Chi <3

This was from Friday's Varsity football game. We lost. XP

So Cheri requests this story, right? So I write it for her.

A cute little piece of Corpse Bride fluff; just a few pages of Victoria's relationship with her father and adorable lil stuff like that.

Cheri reads the story, squees for a bit, and then proceeds to ask me if this is in any way based on one of my own experiences.

Yea. I happen to be a girl from the 19th century talking to her father who is a rich aristocrat. Both of us live in a mansion in the middle of a small Victorian town just a few short minutes from the woods which happen to contain a portal to the land of the dead where there resides every dead person from England with unfinished business, one of which happens to be my former lover from America. Oh yea, and I'm 22 and married to a man my parents dissaprove of, but arranged for me to engage anyway.

What? You didn't know that? Good thing you read the fic :)

-Chi <3