Snakes

Now don't you think that is triangular little head headed for me? He didn't make it to me. He went through a crack and under the house. Which explains less signs of mice. And thanks to the internet I now know not only that I am hosting a Eastern Black rat snake -but he has a bacterial infection -you can't quite see it in this picture but there were several brown lesions on him and apparently it's  pseudomonas. Really.
  I watched this snake wiggle towards me and my 7 year old and I could see the rough brown patches on him and I wondered but I was suprised when ther they were on a snake pictured at a wildlife center. So see I don't only keep up with the Edwards family on the internet. There are many snakes to watch. OH. Sorry. Cheap shot (and possibly obscure).
  Now the winner of the college kids say the darnedest things award for this semester is the email I got after posting a take home exam -12 days in advance of its due date -asking if I could help the student find the answer in their notes because (and I quote -hence the quotation marks) "I have already spent quite a few minutes combing through my notes." I think I spent 3 days walking around foaming at the mouth repeating "Quite a few minutes" over and over again.  Fortunately when I responded that frankly I'd expected "quite a few hours" the student (helpfully) clarified that they only meant on that "particular question" and the entire test had taken (again the quotation marks) "several hours". That took several more days of foaming and repeating.
  And Grandma is back with us which is wonderful and not of course. The little guy loves his captive audience. But then I feel like a captive as she explains to the eldest that we can't teach table manners since we don't stay at the table with her -really we don't stay at the table with our eldest. I mean we start off there but he eats for a long time and it's not just little brothers who don't have the patience for this sort of thing. So we had another mother daughter moment. Or did I already write about this? It's all beginning to blur together. Even the snakes -I thought I'd get better at telling them apart but then I stare at the pictures and the juvenile versions and they all start to look scary.  Was that a rattle? Was that a hiss? You tell me.