Sex and the Dragon

In case you were wondering: THIS is what 1,000 giant mealworms looks like.

I received two boxes by Fed Ex at the museum last week: my orders of 500 live crickets and 1,000 live mealworms from Flukers Farms. Even with the $20 FedEx shipping fee, it's less than half the cost of buying crickets for Mambo from PetCo. My co-workers got a kick out of letting me know that my crickets were waiting for me on the dock. It's a little surprising that anything animal-related even raises an eyebrow around here. I guess most of the time the stuff coming into our museum is dead, but nobody bats an eye if one of the curators walks through the front door holding a wriggling pillowcase or a cart full of mouse skeletons... so why are crickets such a riot?

I took them home and dumped the crickets (500 IS a LOT of them) into their Rubbermaid tub, and shook the mealworms into a Tupperware container with a cup of cornmeal and stuck it in the fridge. I'll have chow for Mambo for a couple of weeks at least.

Last week, driven by the boredom of the ice storm and the mutual illnesses of both myself and Grayson, I went online and looked up "how to tell the gender of your bearded dragon."

It was not, I have to say, all that helpful. There are theoretically two bumps under the tail of the male bearded dragon indicating where his two (two!) penises are located inside his body. The female has no humps or just a single central one. Mambo might have humps. Or not. Grayson and I spent some minutes peering at the poor creature's backside, with nothing definitive to show for it, except for a slightly irritable bearded dragon.

Perhaps he/she is still too young to tell. Mambo is only about 4 or 5 months old. So we'll check again in a couple of months. I'll keep you posted.

As I mentioned, I've been under the weather. Just your garden-variety cold, for the most part. But I was obliged to work through part of it, so I think that's delayed my recovery. I had to host the film crew from Extreme Makeover Home Edition last week, just after coming down with the cold. That was not quite your typical out-of-town film crew. They used four or five cameras all at once and were done in record time. They were a little intense and off-putting at first, but either they warmed to us or we warmed to them and I felt good about it by the time they left.

ANYWAY... I'm still trying to shake the cough and stuffy nose. And then this weekend I had a strange return of the all-over joint achiness that sent me to the doctor for bloodwork back in July. That's when I got the call that I might have Lupus and should see a rheumatologist. Well at last, on the 25th of this month, I will actually visit said rheumatologist. But until now I haven't had a return of the pain. I was sore on Saturday night and in real pain on Sunday morning. I lay on the sofa on a heating pad, feeling sorry for myself for a couple of hours until the ibuprofen kicked in.

It's a strange feeling. Starts out as a general stiffness and achiness, and I don't know if the level of pain actually gets worse or if it is just so pervasive that it wears on your psyche. But it becomes debilitating. I'm glad to have the doc's appointment coming up so there's a chance he can tell me what the hell is going on.

Today I'm back to my usual bad back and creaky hips: run-of-the-mill, B-flat everyday pain that I'm accustomed to. Strange that should seem like such a good thing. It's like my friend Jill said once: "Being 43 feels just like 33, only everything hurts."

The Tooth Fairy Moves In

After that last post on the tooth fairy's shenanigans at my house, you'd think I'd be done with teeth for awhile, but no. Grayson lost yet another tooth (the third in ten days) yesterday. He was at my folks' house for the day, suffering from a fever and cough.

You'll be pleased to hear that the Tooth Fairy was much more on the ball this time. She got the alert as soon as the tooth was out, and managed to stop by the bank on the way home so she had cash on hand. She bought dinner on the way, as well, and remembered to get a $10 broken into two $5s. Then she set her alarm for 9:30 p.m. so she wouldn't forget.

The whole thing went off without a hitch. There's hope for the old broad, yet.

About the Tooth Fairy

Grayson lost a tooth on Sunday night: the second in a week. He bellyached about it all day, barely eating anything for fear it would come out in his food and he'd swallow it. But finally, round about 8:30 in the evening, out it came. So he put it in his little tooth box next to the bed for the Tooth Fairy.

Now, we have not had a lot of luck with the tooth fairy here lately. Last week he lost a tooth at his dad's house, and put it out for the Tooth Fairy at our house and – can you believe it? – she didn't show! Monday morning came and the tooth was still there.

Well, we figured maybe the Tooth Fairy was confused because he had lost the tooth at Dad's but put it out at our house, so we very carefully put the tooth out again on Monday night, loudly announcing to the walls of Grayson's bedroom that we WERE PUTTING THE TOOTH RIGHT HERE. Sure enough, she came Monday night and left $7... her usual $5, plus a bonus I guess for being a day late.

THIS time we were going to be extra sure that she got the message, so again we were very LOUD in announcing that the tooth was being placed in the box as Grayson went to bed Sunday night.

Well, at 6 a.m. Monday morning, the Tooth Fairy woke up with a start and realized she hadn't taken it. She also realized that she had no cash in the house at all.

So she fluttered around the house in the dark in a panic, trying to scrape something together, and ended up leaving three dollar bills cadged from Grayson's own bank, plus a handful of dimes, nickles and quarters cobbled together from every known change accumulation in the house and car. It amounted to a little over $5. She piled the change up in little towers by denomination, rolled the bills into a tube and put them in the box, and crept off to bed with the tooth.

Grayson was delighted that she had showed up, and was amused at the random assortment of bills and change she left for him. He put it all BACK into his allowance bank.

We have a theory about the Tooth Fairy, Grayson and I. We think there are many tooth fairies: that every kid probably has a different one. We think this because A) we have determined that no single fairy could handle the job alone... kids lose teeth all over the world every day. But also B) because not every kid gets the same thing from the tooth fairy. Levi's tooth fairy, for example, leaves comic books. Some kids have cheap tooth fairies, that just leave a quarter or a dollar for a tooth. Some have extravagant tooth fairies who cough up ten bucks or more (Heck, I'd considering cashing in my own teeth for that kind of money).

And sometimes you get a tooth fairy who's new on the job or new to your beat who does funny stuff. One time the tooth fairy put the money under Grayson's pillow - which she had never done before. One time there were five $1 bills all crumpled up into little individual balls and scattered on the bedside table. One time it was a single, perfectly flat, crisp new $5 bill. One time it was all in quarters. Twice she has brought books.

You just never know with fairies.