Possum Reenactment

It has been twelve days since I last posted. I have many many good excuses for not posting, none of which include cleaning my office, replacing the floor in the boys' bathroom, or catching up on a rather large quilting project for which I've cut all the pieces that are sitting in symmetric little piles on a shelf in Grandma's sewing room. But I got distracted by prime time television, flag football, and fleas, though not necessarily in that order -- and don't forget being a homeroom mom and practicing law. I have toyed with the idea of posting every day for a month, just for the exercise in self-discipline. But do I really need any more self-discipline? I already brush my teeth at least once a day -- isn't that enough self-discipline? How disciplined do we all need to be, really?

A week and a half ago, we had our first taste of fall -- the temps dipped into the 70s during the day and the 50s at night, so the boys got to wear their footie pajamas for the first time.



You may be surprised to learn that you (or Aunt Julie) can find footie pajamas in a boys' size 10. Or you may wear footie pajamas yourself every night and this doesn't surprise you at all. Since that one cold night, though, noontime temperatures have not been back below 90 degrees and it's wearing people's patience thin (diagram that sentence!). This is the time of year when true Floridians will actually complain about the heat -- they stoically persevere during the rest of the summer, refusing to complain when it's 99% humidity and 97 degrees and somehow not raining, because they moved here from Michigan fifteen years ago because they "love warm weather." But when it's getting on into October and the electric bills are still coming in at over $400, it's obvious that even the most die-hard Floridians have really only been holding their breaths for the past three or four weeks just waiting for one night when they can sleep with the windows open and wake up with an allergy headache. But I digress whilst complaining about the heat. So sorry.

Do you remember a couple of weeks ago when I posted the possum video? Well, Chance and the possum decided enough time had elapsed since the first episode to stage a reenactment (by the time I took this video, they had reenacted the first catch and release many times). So here is Chance stalking the trash can. Unfortunately, he's not on point, which is much more fun to see, but he's getting old, so this is really the most bird-doggedness that he can muster:



And here is the possum in the trash can waiting to be rescued by my husband, who happened to be out of town for three days when these pictures were taken:



And here is the video of me rescuing the possum from the trash can:



And by "me," I of course mean Elsie.

But do you not find it odd that the same possum is at the bottom of the trash can again? Whose behavior should we expect to change after rescuing the same possum on several other occasions out of the same trash can -- the possum's or Flamingo Joe's? Possum are notoriously not so clever; Flamingo Joe is notoriously clever, so you would expect the dumb possum to keep falling back into the same trash can. But you would think at some point Flamingo Joe would rearrange the trash cans so the possum couldn't jump from the stairs to the cans so easily or maybe Flamingo Joe would even, say, put the lids on the trash cans. I am now convinced that Flamingo Joe was actually conducting an experiment to see how many times he could catch the same dumb possum. He wouldn't come out and admit this when I accused him, but he did get that gleam in his eye and twitch to his lip that he gets when I've busted him. His experiment came to the expected scientific end: you can catch the same dumb possum an infinite number of times up until the point where your wife gets sick of that possum smell and puts the lids on the trash cans.