Orphanage & Rats

This weekend was Al & Shannon DeZonia’s weekend. It was a pleasant time, but even more pleasant was the 5 grown individuals we had staying at our little duplex. It was really funny and slightly insane. It made me glad that they knew they were welcome to stay here even though we’re the old married couple. Luckily Estebaan and Whitney will join us soon as grown-ups.

Here’s how ridiculous the Brooks’ Orphanage living arrangements were and how cute our friends look all cuddled up together:

and here is the future Ice family’s newest addition, Lucy:

Lucy got to stay with us this weekend, too. What’s funny about that is how my dog acted like a 5 year old. Jealousy will do crazy things to you. Look at her face…I mean seriously. Mack didn’t really have a chance of getting attention when she was around. To display his frustration, he wouldn’t even look at me when I called his name and he would walk right past me to whoever was sitting closest, lick them, and stand there while they petted him. He completely ignored me and made sure I saw him getting his lovin’ elsewhere. I didn’t realize that dogs acted that much like children.

Speaking of animals, this story goes down in the history books and is being told by request. Last year, we had a girl come visit campus with her parents. They came because of the hurricanes in Houston so the fact that they were there was sort of unfortunate, seeing as they were evacuated and all. So I’d been with them all day and they seemed pretty normal. In the late afternoon I was going to give them a tour of the dorms and they were walking back to meet me at Zellner, our old Welcome Center. The dad walks in first followed shortly by his daughter who – picture this – sprints into our building crying hysterically and throws her arms around her dad. In between sobs and shrieks she tells her dad something very serious because they both run outside towards the parking lot. Obviously curious at this point, we all go over to the window to watch the scene unfold. So dad and daughter go to the car, look inside to see something horrific, and daughter runs and throws her body down on the grass in front of Zona Luce. The mom (who is several yards away) somehow catches on and is bawling in the middle of campus. Not knowing what to do, I walk outside to make sure everything is ok. I’m thinking surely they hit someone with their car or left Grandma in there who has since died or something.

I walk over to mom and ask if everything is ok. To this she replies, “NO!! Ohhhhh ohhhh I just can’t believe it. Ashley has just had such a hard time this year. Ohhhhhh ohhhhhhh…our dog died and then she broke her wrist playing sports and ohhhhhhhhhhhhh. We were supposed to go to the hotel to drop them off but we didn’t ohhhhhhhh and now…. ohhhhhhh no no no no.” I was a bit confused so I asked her more clearly what had happened. She then says, “They died. Oh they died. She’s so upset. Her rats have died in the car.”

Let me get this straight, ma’am. You are causing such a scene that people are walking out of their offices to make sure everything is alright all because some rats died? Oh wow. At this point all we could do was try to keep a straight face as Jacob Martin got a box from somewhere to dispose of the dead rodents. The mom then told me all about how these weren’t just any rats, they were very special rats. In her words, “Buttons just had the best personality and Fuzzy was just….. well, retarded… and they are just irreplaceable.” Riiiight. The best part? Ratty will be at ACU in the fall.

In other news, these two kids came today that had terrible terrible speech impediments. I thought the kid’s name was Doe. It was Joe. It was really sad, but they were homeschooled by their mom who also had a speech impediment. That seems counter intuitive to me. I felt really bad for them but I couldn’t understand them for the life of me. Some people were so good at talking with them … they wouldn’t even really look you in the eye when you talked. You could tell that they were extremely insecure and it was heartbreaking. I wish that sympathy would have helped me understand them better though. Sheesh. We need Sara Craddock or Kylie to come to the rescue.