remind me that i love her...

[mwyaren]

a little backstory: about a year and a half ago, when i still had half a dozen degus and they were all young and springy... i was at C's one night and had just decided to crash there instead of going home. i had just nestled down when i got a call from my mother saying that she'd opened the degu cage and one of them flew out and was now behind the bookcase. she needed me to come home and catch her. i was, obviously, very angry, and this was quite a bit of a last straw with her in terms of the degus. she was always giving them cardboard boxes and such because she had fun watching them shred them (meanwhile it made it a pain in the ass to clean the cage)... when she couldn't see hay anywhere in the cage, she would put in a generous handful (meanwhile what had happened was that they'd buried the last handful - because they already had too much in the cage - and forgotten about it, and did i mention the stuff's expensive?). so ever since then, she goes immediately to the defensive when the degus are mentioned.

so today...

one or both of the degus has diarrhea. this is not a good sign. i went to mom, concerned.

"i don't know what's wrong. i mean, i haven't given them anything they don't normally eat--"

"I DIDN'T GIVE THEM ANYTHING!"

...

"i wasn't implying that anyone had. i'm saying it means they're really sick."

"oh. yeah." [/return to utter disinterest]

i'm ready to go live under a bridge.