Today I counted about 30 baby snails. And those are just the ones that are brave enough to come out of hiding. 

You can see their little antenna easily when they leave the rocks below to scoot across the aquarium glass.  I guess they’re kinda cute, but not in a furry puppy sort of way.  Maybe more in a caviar sort of way.  Except caviar isn’t cute.  So never mind.

We went to the Pet Store the other night to get filters for the tank and saw 4 week old baby snails.  At that age, at the size of a pea, they most certainly are what you could call cute. 

However, right now they are still quite tiny – a little smaller than a nerd. You know, the tiny sugary candies? 
Once a few Halloween’s ago I listened as a lady explained to her protesting 4 year old son that he couldn’t have Nerds because he would turn into a skeleton.  She told him he had to pick another type of candy out of the basket.  Something with less small pieces to get spilled.

She was being absolutely serious.

Johann, meet Crazy Awesome Blog Readers.
Crazy Awesome Blog Readers, meet Johann.

That’s pronounced Yo-Hann for those of you unfamiliar with Bach’s first name.  Johann Sebastian Bach was this guy who, like, wrote music and stuff one time.

Um.  That’s who we named the tree after.  I don’t know why.  Ask Kait.  It was her idea.

*Edit: I’ve been firmly corrected.  Again. We didn’t name Johann after a guy who wrote music.  We named him after Johann Kraus from Hellboy.

One day I’ll actually take a good picture with my phone and you’ll all be like – 
Wow!  She takes really good pictures with her phone!

Once upon a time we were poor.  We didn’t have money for a Christmas tree.  I didn’t really care about this – felt no real need to have one.  But my kids were not at all cool with that.
So, off I went to Walgreens, where the Robitussin deals had gained me quite a bit of money in Register Rewards.

Ahem…

I mean, Jingle Bucks.

I thought to myself that if they had a Christmas tree I would get it.  And they did.  So I did.

I bought what I thought was a delightfully full, almost elegant Christmas tree.  That’s what the box had pictured.

I laugh at my naivety sometimes.

And that’s how we ended up with Johann, our we’re too cheap to purchase a real tree every year Christmas tree. I find him endearing now.  And I don’t know how long it’ll be before I’m cool with not having Johann around.

He’s not fully decorated.  I think we’re going with a ’round’ theme this year instead of putting up the 3000 ornaments we have.  It just makes more sense to me.  looking at the same exact ornaments every year was starting to get a bit redundant.  I think we’ll change them up each year, surprise the kids with ornaments they’ve forgotten about. 

It’ll be like Christmas!

Conditions were perfect.

And now we have snails after just 9 days.

Lots and lots of tiny little mystery apple snails.

Like 50 or 10,000 or something.

Dang it if I just can’t tell them apart.  They all look exactly alike.  And because of their mysterious nature I think we will call half of them Mystery.
But now that I think about it they are also graceful and majestic, maybe we should call them Grace.
or Majesty.
or Debbie.

Yes.  Debbie is what we’ll name half of them.

And Bernie is what we’ll call the other half.

I was doing a quick fish tank cleaning and actually got to witness these little mystery snails starting to hatch! I didn’t realize how fascinated I would be by them.

Ryan said he was a little disturbed by my interest in the baby snails. 

When I went to bed only a handful had hatched. 
Um… A very, very tiny hanful.  Like a hand the size of a dime.  Or something smaller. 
This morning, however, they are everywhere. All over the cucumber I put in there for them, all over each other…

Piles of them. 

And while last night they just looked like brown blobs of gross, today they look exactly like tiny snails.  If you look real close, that is.

I took our two adult snails out of the tank temporarily, along with our pleco. I didn’t want them accidentally eating any babies.  I’m not sure if they would, but the babies are all over the cucumber that the adults love so I was a little concerned there might be some confusion. 

Or arguing.

And I just don’t want to deal with anymore fussing today.

Although the snails don’t seem to care where we put them, Pleco is sulking at being removed from his perfect habitat.  If you’ve never seen a fish sulk you’ve never met our plecostomus.  He’s such a baby when things don’t go his way.  I’m hoping the Debbies and Bernies grow fast so Pleco can find his happy place again.

And so I can start finding homes for them.

I’m so glad they don’t wear diapers.

Apparently, we have a lot of stars in the sky.  Way more than we can possibly know.

This is according smart scientists.

The night sky may be a lot starrier than we thought.

A study suggests the universe could have triple the number of stars scientists previously calculated. For those of you counting at home, the new estimate is 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That’s 300 sextillion.

Good job, geniuses.

And my spell checker hates the word sextillion.

Ryan: Have you seen the snails lately?  I think the black one is trying to steal the white one’s shell or something.

Me: Honey, I don’t think that’s what’s happening.

[snail egg sack discovered]

Ryan: snicker, snicker.

Me: Yup.

So, if the egg sack fares well we should have somewhere 50 and 300 baby snails crawling around in the next week or two.  We have a pretty large fish tank, but not that large.  I’m just wondering what we’re going to do with all those apple snails.
And as cozy as our two snails have been lately I’m pretty sure this won’t be their only egg sack.

Maybe we should be thinking about getting into the snail business.

Anybody thinking of adopting an apple snail for Christmas?

If you haven’t thought about it, it’s high time you did.  Cause it looks as though I’m going to have a lot of snail placing to do.  I won’t even make you fill out an application.

Apple snails are the biggest living freshwater snails on earth and can get up to 6 inches in size!  They’re happy to eat vegetables and require little clean up.  Now you just have to have one!

Oh, and they won’t do nasty things to your carpet.

I ate turkey today. Twice.
Tryptophan has the opposite effect on me, it would appear. I’m sitting here at almost midnight typing a blog post on my phone.

I have mad thumb skilz.

But I really think it would be nice to just fall asleep. Ya know? Cause it’s coming up on 11:59 pm.

It’s 71 degrees outside tonight and I feel like going for a walk. But nobody else does. Or at least I assume they don’t since they’re all sleeping.
They’ve all abandoned me, it would seem, for turkey induced comas.

And I have an overwhelming urge to drink coffee, like I need anything else keeping me up right now. Lucky for my sleep-needing self, there won’t be any made until tomorrow.

This isn’t normal, is it?

I guess I just need to finish this post and lay down. Maybe the rhythemic sounds of my little ones breathing will lull me to sleep.

Or maybe not.

Jesse is fussing quietly in his sleep.
I’m absolutely sure that as soon as I do get to sleep he is going to hollar out in confused protest.

But, I’m going to put down this gadget and at least attempt a little shuteye.

My phone is about to die, you see. I have no choice.

So, goodnight. Sweet leftover apple pie dreams.

And one last happy Thanksgiving to ya!

When you decide to start a series on your blog it really is a good idea to keep it up.  However, I’m not going to be able to this week.

I’m having a garage sale and for some reason this 7 hour event is taking over my entire life right now.  I’ve been pricing stuff, sorting, hanging, trying to find creative ways to display things with no tables, and using my friendly neighbor and her cute 2 month old baby girl as an excuse to take too many breaks.

Oh, and I just remembered I still have to get money together for change.

Speaking of money, I’d better make a lot of it.

Kait did make hot chocolate last night using a delicious recipe our friend Becky gave us.  I didn’t get a video so we’ll have to make another batch and review it.  However, she did get a picture of the event.

He liked it.

This morning I woke up to 50 degrees.  I am so cold.

And I really, really want a hot shower.  But you guys know why that’s not going to happen.  Even if I did turn on the water heater it would be an hour before it warmed the water all the way.

So, I’ll just sit here and be cold.

I feel like some kind of wimp.  50 degrees is not all that cold, really, and I’m not even outside.  So, I’m not really sitting in 50 degrees. 

But I’m still cold.

I’ve lived in Rhode Island, and on the east side of Washington state.  I know what cold is and 50 degrees does not count.

But I’m still cold.

I guess it’s time we start looking for wood for the fireplace.  It’s supposed to get below 40 tonight!

And just thinking about that is making me feel even more cold.

*Edit – I posted this 10 minutes ago and the temperature has actually gone down to 48 since then. I think I’ll get up off my duff and make some hot coffee or something.

Am I the only one who uses Google search for things other than searching?
Like how to spell something.  Or which words are supposed to be used in a certain phrase?  Or is it one word or two?

Are the kids running rampant or rampat?
Did I used to or use to have a crush on a certain member of New Kids on the Block?
Or to find out if crockpot is actually crock pot?
Is the sun blazing or blaring?

Neither or niether?
Lier or liar?
Illusive, allusive, or ellusive?

This is daily for me.

Daily.

I don’t even bother with dictionary.com anymore. I just get to Googlin’.

If what I search for is wrong in some way Google always catches it for me and either offers to correct it, or just goes ahead and fixes it.  It’s like Google can read my mind and knows exactly what I want. 
I find that kind of intelligence very attractive.

It seems that romance has taken on a new meaning around here.

Yesterday I was particularly tired (and today, too, but right now I’m talking about yesterday). My husband recognized my need for something, anything to help me feel better.

He surprised me after the kids went to bed by turning on the shower. I looked at him confused.

Then he explained.

Hee had secretly turned on the water heater an hour before so he could give me the gift of a hot shower.

How incredibly romantic!

There is something so sweet in the simplicity of this.

If you don’t know why a hot shower would be something to get gushy over you can read here about how we’re reducing our energy usage by turning off our water heater.