Wall-e the Hamster

About a year ago we bought this cute little dwarf hamster. We brought it home and settled it into it's little cage. Two weeks later the hamster we thought was a boy had 5 babies! I googled how to take care of them and eventually became more endeared to the babies then I was to the mother whom we'd just begun to tame. I kept the two boy hamsters and sold or gave away the other 4 (the mother included). The one was named Wall-e and the other Hercules. (Thank heavens for Disney movies or our pets would lack good names.) Hercules had a mishap and returned to Hamster heaven a few months ago but Wall-e is still with us.

With that background painted allow me to proceed with my topic. I sat here this evening looking at my house that looks like the remains of tornado wreckage and began to wonder when things would be less complicated. This led me to wonder if its the circumstances that lead me to survive rather than to thrive, or if its just me. I looked up at my little hamster in his cage and came to a conclusion. I have been meaning to replace the shavings in his cage for a week now and somehow it falls between the cracks. Once, I even got up there to take down his cage and clean it and I realized he had a ton of his food stashed under those shavings. I quickly allowed myself to slide out of the responsibility and excused it by claiming the best interest of the hamster and his winter supply. So tonight as I started to shut down everything for the night and said goodnight to my little hamster, I realized that maybe things arent' perfect right now but there's alot of love in this house. Maybe Wall-e doesn't live in a fresh shavings environment but he is one loved hamster. I sneak him fruit and cheese and veggies whenever I can and he's not as dwarf-like as I'm betting all his sisters are (where ever they may be).

I think, no better yet, I hope and pray that it is enough for my children, as well, to be in such a place. Maybe this house is rarely clean, and maybe we have chocolate chip pancakes for dinner occasionally, and maybe we watch more movies than we should some days; but hopefully when I tuck them into bed individually each night, and say prayers individually with them each night, and hug and kiss them as much as I can all day and again at night, and hold them when they are sick or scared, and keep them safe from the things of the world, then hopefully, I have done enough. Hopefully LOVE will help us travel across that bridge from the land of surviving to a land of thriving.