A perfect one, that is.

The day started out as one of my favorites when Stan came into our room with breakfast on a tray for me. Included were my iPad, the newspaper and a piping hot cup of tea. Breakfast in bed is my idea of heaven. I relaxed most of the morning away but I was so cozy and content under the down blankets on our bed, it was nearly impossible break free.

I heard Stan talking to Lucas as he left our room. Lucas was already up, showered and was looking for breakfast. He settled on a can of chicken noodle soup…this is Lucas I am talking about so it’s no surprise to me that he decided chicken noodle soup is an appropriate breakfast.

My back dictates to me when to get up by becoming achy and sore from being supine too long so I throw back the covers, make the bed and emerge from our room refreshed and ready to take on whatever activities we have on tap for today.

As I am headed downstairs I run into Claire whose internal alarm clock woke her at 10:30…good for her!

Claire pours herself a bowl of cereal and heads to our screened in porch. The little rocking love seat calls to her so she settles in, covers herself with the big down blanket we have outside, turns on the tv and makes herself a cozy little breakfast spot.

Lucas has already headed outside to play football with his buddies.

Zach has yet to make an appearance. It’s 11:10 and I don’t think we’ll see him until well past high noon…he’s 15 and he’s really good at it! Oooooooh, I take it back ~ as I am sitting here writing Zach’s handsome face makes an appearance rounding the corner into the kitchen. He must have been up for quite some time, he has a bag of trash from his room in his hand. He heads directly outside with it. When he comes back in he has a wry, little smile on his face and with flourish announces to me that his friend is breeding his crested gecko and he, Zach Pokrywka, is going to get one. He follows me as I walk out of the kitchen, shaking my head. Zach says, in no uncertain terms, that he will have one of these…the coolest thing he has ever held.

We’ve run the gamot of animals in our house…

Stan and I started our marriage with a golden retriever baby girl we named Charlie. Zach’s first pet was a goldfish he named Spot. He progressed to a gerbil named Spike and then he and Lucas got dwarf hamsters named Brownie and Sparkle. We brought two baby chipmunks into the house after our cat killed their mama and we named them (appropriately) Chip and Munk. We’ve had cats named Fricken’ Leroy, Princess and Bartflek (what we thought was German for Whiskers but turned out to be “beard spot”. All three of these were barn cats we found when we lived in our tiny German village, Prosselsheim, and were returned to their barns when we moved.) When we got back to the States we adopted a black cat and called her Luci (short for Lucifer thanks to Stan). We added another golden girl to our house when Zach was four, Lucas was 18 months and I just found out I was pregnant with Claire. Zach and Lucas got axolotls one Christmas. The man at the mall pet store assured me they were easy to care for and the perfect pets for young boys ~ they died within a week of bringing them home…cool to look at but terrible pets. Lucas was gifted with a kitten named Shadow on his sixth birthday. He was one of the best cats ever and we still mourn his tragic passing. Now we have Graysee and Tigger. When we moved to Richmond Zach was so depressed and he felt needed an animal to dote on so we got him a mouse he named Pumpkin and then we went on to get three rats named Ellie, Oreo and Cheerio. We adopted a bunny named Sugar. We brought in a field mouse that our cat tried to kill, named it “Lucky,” rehabilitated it and were getting ready to set it free when we noticed she was now four. Lucky thanked us for our compassion by producing three more mice, escaping and eventually getting herself caught in a mouse trap. Our goldens are long gone. The cats are whittled down to just Graysee and Tigger. The rats have gone on to rat heaven. The chipmunks left us long ago. So now we just have two cats and the rabbit…seems like the time to add a crested gecko, huh?

Stan is happily ensconced in the basement building shelves so he is blissfully unaware of Zach’s desire to bring a reptile into the house…

Anyway, the day is shaping up to be quite a doozy now that Zach has emerged. This blog was going in a completely different direction until the handsome young man with the wry smile came bounding into the kitchen, puppy-like, telling me he is getting a crested gecko and asking me to fix him an omelet for breakfast.

Ahhhhhh, for the love of my children…