aside for the "morning": looking at that title makes me glad i don't drink much anymore. half the country probably has a crashing headache right now. (it's a play on a kristofferson/cash song.) before my coffee and already i'm excited. today we go pick up the degus. Chris is still in bed, NPR on his alarm clock radio. but i practically jumped out of bed--no, that's not quite right. i babysat for my niece Tori one school night last week, and after ten (an hour and a half past school night bedtime), i said, "i'm not talking to you anymore. go brush your teeth and jump into bed." she corrected me, as usual in her dealings with people at least twice her height and weight. "i do NOT jump into bed. i HOP into bed." she has something there, i'm sure. i definitely hopped out of bed this morning. THE WHOLE WORLD IS WAITING, as they used to say last time there was a huge unjust military action by the U.S. back then, though, it wasn't like it is now. thursday night i went to my parents house and watched the debate; in the 1960s, the Kennedy-Nixon debate changed the way it works entirely when they had the first televised debate. By all radio listener accounts, Nixon won easily. But enough middle-class people had televisions by then that they viewers said Kennedy won. Women saw the youth, good looks, charm, and the mist of Camelot rising, and didn't ask their husbands who to vote for. (We tend to be more adept with body language, too.) Nixon had gout and was running a fever, sweating and wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. He wasn't too pretty to look at to begin with, but that was the first time it cost someone the Presidency. (Thank you, Prof. Bob Arnoldt, for being the amazing fountain of unbiased historical knowledge that you are, not to mention a great man and educator, and for making me feel like i really earned an 'A' for the first and only time in my life. More about you another time.) So Kennedy flashed his dazzling white smile, and the world moved on. Chris listened to the debates on NPR, then came home from work and got online for after-game stuff. But I was sitting at the kitchen table with my parents, and I saw my dad, a lifelong right-wing man in his late 60s, point, snicker, and shake his head at the sight of George Bush saying, with his defenses all over his face, body, and voice, "I knew we were after al Qaeda!" My dad started out a lackadaisical Bush supporter and a staunch war supporter. (My moderate left mother made a sound that was half chuckle, half gasp, and said, "He sounds just like Tori! My eight and a half year old niece knows absolutely everything the grownups do, just like Our esteemed President.) A few nights ago, I got to see my dad laugh at the man who continues to insist on waging that war against the monsters under the bed. He probably won't bother to vote; he never does, but it's a shame this time, because I think he saw all that God and Country he loves, that a lot of us love, in John Kerry. When I was a kid, my dad would take me along to the hardware store so I could look at the animals. That same hardware store is where I first met degus, a little over a year after Hank, my mutant toy poodle other half, had died. Hank came from a pet store, full of inbreeding defects as most store-bought animals are. The degus were the first animals that came close to sparking my heart after losing Hank (presumably to the front tire of a minivan, from what the side of his head they tried to hide from me showed). But I'm a member of PETA, my good friends and my anam cara ex-boyfriend Matt are pretty serious vegan AR activists, and I've learned that buying animals propigates an evil cycle of puppy mills, bad treatment, and sickly animals. Exotic animals are not supposed to be pets. I found Bo, Luke and Daisy online, advertised for adoption. A family in Michigan just has too many pets. The rat doesn't get along with the degus. They wanted someone to take all three siblings, free to a good home. Free to a good home can be dangerous, too, but in this case, there's been a month of emailing back and forth, getting pics of the degus and their habitat, and describing our lifestyle, where we live, and I even thought it would be best to send a picture of me and Chris to them, a random snapshot, not a glamour shot, so they'd get a feel for us. I even made my case to Matt and won: These three kids are already here, already in captivity. They can't go live in the Andean foothills now. Money is not exchanging hands. The animals have been fixed. They're more social than rats, and enjoy people's company. I won. Matt gracefully said, "I want one." Of course, they're too smart and social to "have one;" you get a pair of degus, at least, or the loner is bored and lonely. So today we embark on a ten-hour round trip to East Lansing, where we'll meet the family, talk about what the degus are like and any special quirks they might have, and the nice family with too many animals will give us our three new household members, their habitat, and the food and bedding they have for them. We were thinking of bringing them some of the devil's food cake I made a couple of nights ago. They don't want money. They want Bo, Luke, and Daisy safe and happy, and I've proven my intentions through email. They know I've researched, passed readings on to Chris, that I call animals family members and that I'm a fairly strict vegetarian AR (animal rights) proponent. So I'm bringing baked goods to the neighbors, and they're giving me kittens, so to speak. I'll offer to send pictures and updates to the children, who know more than anyone that animals are not saleable goods. "Global village" is not just a buzzphrase when I look at it that way. The world has moved on again, and most of the people who read this never knew it any other way. Maybe Bob Arnoldt should teach a history class called "The Advent and Rise of the Internet" someday. In the meantime, as I said, the world moved on, and I'd better do the same. Our three new kids are waiting five hours north.
