Digi wolves

...more of L's digi artWe finally had another Petland protest on Sat. It’s been way too long, but we just haven’t been able to work one into the schedule until now. Maybe our unusually long absence of a few months lulled the Sardine (the very unscrupulous and cruel owner, whose real name is Sardina) into thinking we gave up. It was great to be back! The weather cooperated very well, despite looking pretty dismal all morning. We had a great turnout and much positive feedback from the community!

Sat. night was technically our date night, so L & H stayed at my parents for the night. Given the fact that M had worked a long day Sat., was working again Sunday, and hasn’t had a day off for weeks (again, his own choice—nobody makes him do these things!), I decided to cancel our plans and just stay in for the night. I’d rather laze about the house with my babies than spend time & money going out, just to watch him barely function the entire night! It was a very uneventful night.

The kids came back Sunday morning, and L was feeling very unwell with the cold I had last week, and H was just starting to get it. She had a rough day Sunday, and I felt so bad for her. It was a miserable head cold with an exceptional amount of pain and pressure in the head and ears. I had a lot of nausea with it as well, and L was struggling with that yesterday. She attended dance, because they’ve had the last couple of weeks off, and they have a big performance coming up in a month. It’s making me fairly nervous that with only four weeks of class before the big annual day performance, they still don’t know the whole dance! In my non-dancer’s mind, they should know the entire routine by now and spend the next four weeks perfecting it. It’s such a very detailed style of dance that there is always a ton going on and lots of little things to pay attention to. I have faith in Meenakshi and her ability to pull it off. Her girls always look great at all of their performances, so I won’t mention to my girl that I’m internally freaking out a bit.

Meena is just now sending out the order for the ankle bells and jewelry that is needed for the performance. Everything is coming from India, and the timing on that worries me a bit, too. If L doesn’t get her bells in time for the performance, we may have a rough time getting her out there. The bells are quite a big deal for her!

While my mom and I were at dance with L, M had a very important task to take care of at work. Sunday was the day that the wooden flowers were auctioned off as a fundraiser for the gardens. L painted the tiger flower for the fundraiser, and it, along with the 25 or so other flowers have been displayed throughout the gardens all summer. We fully intended on purchasing her beautiful “Save the Tigers” flower. M had to run over to the other building during the auction, so he could bid on her flower. We both thought that it wouldn’t be a big deal, and we’d place a tasteful bid, slightly above the minimum bid and bring our flower home (where we would then have to fight over it with the grandparents. ;-) but we were wrong. There were other bidders for her flower. People we didn’t even know, and they really wanted it and were bidding very competitively!

My first bit of concern came when I realized that M should have already called with the good news, but there was no call. When the call came later, I received his news with mixed feelings. We got the flower! (Yay us!) His next statement was, “but you don’t even want to know what we had to pay to get it!” Umm, yes, yes I do need to know—I am the one that handles all of the family finances! It only cost us FIVE times more than the range we were expecting! The major upside of that is that we got to tell our girl that her art was the source of a hot bidding war and ended up costing a lot of money. She was shocked and dumbfounded and kept saying she couldn’t understand why anyone would pay that much for what amounted to $15 worth of supplies. Even with a miserable cold, she couldn’t hide her proud glow. I feel a little badly for the other parties who really, really wanted it and were disappointed by not getting it. I’m so glad we have it though—no matter what the cost, and will proudly display it our back garden until it crumbles away.

She’s been counting days until our friend, Anthony Marr, comes for a visit later this week. She adores him and has so many plans for him when he gets here. She’s absolutely giddy that her tiger flower is home now, so she can show him. Anthony has done some fantastic things with his work in trying to protect the Bengal tigers (much of it detailed in a documentary). They share a love of tigers, and she has been excited to show him her flower since she painted it months ago!