I must need my head examined. Two weeks before Christmas and I’m standing in Pet Smart with Ellie, eyeing a yellow orange fur ball named Spock. Spock is up for adoption with the Hanover Humane Society. A kitten?? Beam me up, Scotty. No intelligent life here. We are at the pet store, mind you, to score a bargain on an Aqua-pure water test kit for William for Christmas. He got fish for his birthday. Or rather, he got fish six weeks after his birthday, after cycling the water tank and testing it every few days by me driving a little vial of tank water over to the pet not-so-smart. My life has time for special little errands such as this. For testing the levels of nitrate, nitrite, and hydrogen sulfide, along with 22 other trace chemicals in our water. The water that comes from a 39-foot well that sprung a leak under the house last week and is requiring $489 new pump. I think that was the same week I came home from an exhaustive shopping trip feeling smug and accomplished. “Well,” said Bill, after a day of cleaning gutters and hanging Christmas lights, “that may well be the most expensive Christmas shopping trip ever. I just discovered we need a new roof.” Dang! Even if I returned one of the children, I wouldn’t get enough back on our credit card to afford that!

The other reason we were at the pet store was to get the 35 live crickets for Sophie’s pet gecko, Sticky. A beloved member of our family going on the ripe old age of five, Sticky suffered quite a trauma earlier this week when he was accidentally hit by a falling water dish. The slight nick to his tail seem to worsen instantly, resulting in his distressed little 8-inch-long critter wondering about his cage, snapping the tail back and forth, waving the very tip of it wildly, like a miniature fly Fisher. Then, to Sophie’s utter dismay–I think she was literally in shock and she called from the bedroom (I’m at the linen closet digging for first aid ointment–reptile formula–and Bill is downstairs furiously Googling “Help! My gecko… Severed tail…”) “Mom?” says Soph, her eyes glued to the cage, her voice as flat and factual as though she is telling me the cookies are done. Or the way Bill did with the roof. “Mom? Sticky is eating it. Mom! He’s eating his tail. Sticky just ate his tail.” Well, that’s then. Problem solved. I’ve always liked the efficiency of animals. Make that a SEVEN inch long critter.

We don’t get the new kitten. Have Dad hooked by phone, have Ellie weeping tears of joy inside herself, but we do not have the correct answer to the indoor/outdoor Kitty question, and the guy informs us that this is an indoor cat only. I assure him we see a vet, oh, at least every few years, and that all pets at the Burk house are (more or less) up on their shots. “No way,” says number one. “We have a policy against our placements going outside. Aside from disease and injury, you know, cats can kill birds and other wildlife.” What? What on the earth?! In addition to eating salmon off their silver platters from tufted silk pillows on the inside, our felines do, in fact, kill birds. They, in fact, ravage and devour birds, torture mice and have decapitated squirrels twice their size. The night she died two winters ago, our barely three-pound waif named Molly took out a rat the size of a cinder block. Death is a part of our life. What about old Stumpy–er, Sticky, and his five murdered Cricket each day?

By this point, I was attached to Spock myself and wanted to rescue him from a life of daytime TV and kitty yoga, but could not bring myself to lie to Mr. Humane Society with my daughter standing by. So we leave, kitten-less. Mission aborted. As we are licking our wounds and climbing into the van, Ellie pipes up, in an uncannily calm and reassuring voice, “That’s okay, Mom. Don’t worry about it. I got two cats into the house already when you and Dad said ‘no.’ I can get another. No worries.” Love that girl. She is referring to the infamous “Jeep,” of course, the stray kitten quite literally place in our garage one fall, and the kittens she bore under Sophie bed six months later. But that is another story.

Well the pets trash the inside of our house and bits and parts fall off the outside, I would say Bill and I try to keep the roof on, but obviously we haven’t managed even that! I’m sad to think a new pet wouldn’t begin to outlast Ellie’s tenure here, at the Burk Motel. Her sophomore year is filled with talk of college, and which classes count and which classes don’t and which way she should be breathing so that someday, somewhere, years from now, the almighty school she chooses will give her credit for it. Scary. I am just trying to hang on to her present life. Her orchestra class recently went down to the Coliseum to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and was inspired to put on quite a light show at their winter concert, taping glow sticks to their bows, LED lights to their instruments and playing in the pitch-dark. It was met with a standing ovation.

Sophie is having a great final year of middle school, already swimming for the Hanover Hawks swim team (I had to put that news in this letter since I’ve been boasting it all over town. I even told our grocery guy and the guy that delivers Amazon–oh yeah, this year they are the same guy!) She is also on labor committee and thus happily gets out of class to don her “Press pass” and attend school and sporting events to take photos. William’s fourth grade year is even louder, bigger than the one before it. Way more banging. He still loves biking and yard work, two outdoor activities. He would never get adopted. Definitely an outdoor animal. I am happy to keep him anyway. He, too, has grown up far more quickly than I was ready for, blowing out of here with a bike helmet and a TracFone headed down the street. As luck would have it, the international men’s bike race came literally right by our street past fall, closing the county roads and canceling school, so we threw a boys’ bike party and got blocked in for five hours with 12 other creatures a lot like William.

Perhaps the member of our family with the most news to share is Bill, who has taken a second career as a Hanover County school bus driver. He trained this fall and entered the ranks just last month as a substitute who happens to drive almost every day. Imagine it! I am still at the schools subbing or Mommy-ing or volunteering almost daily, so imagine my shock as, turning into Oak Knoll Middle School one day, I see a big yellow school bus screaming down 301 honking and waving and–No way! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Bus Driver Bill. He rolls out of bed at 5:30, makes the morning run, goes off to his day job and then does the afternoon run, too. I noticed yesterday he’s adopted the bus driver uniform: comfy flannel shirt, coffee state right front lower, and underneath that he’s wearing his clergy shirt! I picture him pulling the bus to a screech at a corner phone booth so he can Clark Kent his way to pastor duty! Once recently at school Sophie was walking down the hallway and a friend stopped her. “Hey Soph! I just had your mom for a sub in my English class, and this morning your dad drove my bus!” Like many other helicopter parents out there, we like to keep tabs on our children. Bill and I have simply taken that to a whole new level.

I suppose wherever in the galaxy Spock got to this Christmas, I am grateful that we don’t have another mouth to feed. Counting the 12 days of breakage and chaos–er, blessings of Christmas, I am feeling very grateful. You can beam me back down. My blessings cost a lot, they move too quickly and are way too needy and noisy. There are some days, with the kids swimming and doing gymnastics and orchestra and our after-school and evening lives that I have seriously threatened to teach the dog to drive. Ol’ Gus could manage that. Or at least do dishes. We simply need more weight pulling around here. But in this crazy lost world, they are blessings through and through, alien intruders from the Planet Sweet, and I am trying to sit down long enough to enjoy them.

May you and yours enjoy many blessings, as well. Hope you get a lot of fresh air this Christmas, and May the force be with you!