While I recover from 20 hours in the car driving through tornados and blinding storms…
While I regroup from the challenging reality of family, distance, age and the inexorable breakdown of the human body…
While I rest up from just a tad too much intense contact with parent and child, and the mass of humanity at the zoo yesterday. While I tackle some ugly phone calls to Sprint, the cable provider and the guy who rewired all of the landscape lights in the courtyard, ran to the bank to cash the check, doesn’t speak English and can’t explain to me why the photo cell lights that come on at dark are on every minute of every day.
While I call the doctor and inquire which self-diagnosis she favors: I’m getting some osteoarthritis in my hands or my thumb is going to just drop off during some not-so distant night. It’s weird: one day God had little bumper pads between my joints and the next day: whoosh! nothing but a thin layer of skin over floppy bones.
Anyway, can you tell I was thinking of you as I snapped these pictures between tours and talks yesterday? I was. (This last little guy is for my spell checker…but will she know what it is?)
A Mark On My Wall 
Glad you’re home more or less safe and sound — with your thumb still attached for the moment. Hang in, my dear. I can’t tell what you were thinking but I love that sweet face with stuff all over it’s nose — quick, hand me a paper towel!
What sweet-faced critters you found to show us. A good balance to the painful litany of life’s body slams.
Lisa, that’s just some sand on his wet little nose, from digging, digging, digging. Re you, I was thinking: no more busloads of children here at the zoo today. School must be out and Liza and Mary must be free of their little meerkats for a few months! Now, at the zoo, we settle into many families and many non-English tourist groups. It’s fun to practice my French and Spanish bits and scraps- I’m working up a good vocabulary around “Oui, ce gorille est non seulement grand, he’ ; de s graisse également.!”
I never have to recover from too much time with a parent, but I do with child! Next week at the beach will cause that, I am sure. I love all your critters; what the heck is that first one?
Hope Bud is okay.
(I meant too much time – anymore – since they are all gone).
Judy- that’s Hoover. A hint: his kind is older than dirt and he lives on termites…doesn’t have lovely eyelashes, all 8 of them?
I’m glad you made it back safely, even though the lights are on all the time.
Just to cheer you up, when I went to the doctor with pain in my thumb, my doctor said, “That’s usually the first place arthritis shows up.” Of course, it’s in my left thumb, and I’m left-handed. The good thing is that it doesn’t hurt all the time. And I must say that as old as I am, it doesn’t seem to have progressed all that much. So, take heart, I’m a lot older than you are.
What is that first picture? I envy your being at the zoo. I would love to take Ella to Lowry Park Zoo while they’re here; we’ll probably just go to Sarasota Jungle Gardens. It isn’t as big, and there are animals there that she can see.
Oh no. Count me in the pain-in-the-thumb group. It comes and goes. Also in one other finger… maybe I’ve given too many rude finger signs in my life?
The Hoover photo was loading very slowly on my computer today and let me tell you, it was very scary trying to figure out what in heck it was going to be…at least it was not part of YOUR body or some other human being’s. Sounds like you have had some very trying times lately. Hope things get better soon.
That’s an anteater? I didn’t realize that they lounged around. I thought they just ate ants. : )
Sorry about your hand issues. Ouch.
Lots of love to you, Vicki.
2 more days with my little meerkats.
How’s Bud?
I love your diversity of life, but all the ISSUES, that’s another story. I am dreading flying and driving back there if there are nasty storms. I just about died of fright a couple of years ago when we had to get from Washington D.C. to Penn. in epic horrible weather. I adore meerkats! Ils sont mignons.
Best guess… Sun Bear… it’s hard to tell when I’m looking at his END. I like all that skin, though.
I love the little pigs …..
Thumbs…. my first thought is always gout…. thumb and big toe… but then I am weird that way and no one listens to me anyway! Hope your thumb gets better…
I understand completely the “too much time with child” thing…. even if you love them more than life itself… they can be… tiring… even at age 22.
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What is better than the zoo critters? Not much. I’ve about recovered from my only child’s high school graduation last weekend. Now, college prep begins. Sniff.
Hoover–hee! Great name.
Thanks for the bunny pic – Vicki!
hi there…got here from Wende…so are these critters from the Lincoln Park Zoo, or from florida? i live in tampa and have yet to see an aardvark at Lowry!!
i bet working at a zoo is pretty neat…do you get to interact with a lot of the animals? i’d really be tempted to stick a meerkat in my pocket by day’s end.
Lowry Park is pretty cool, but I don’t get to go all that much because my boyfriend is sort of over it. We do most of our animal watching at Busch Gardens.
also (oops), i’m sort of disappointed that i didn’t realize Hoover was an aardvark. because i totally LOVED the Arthur cartoons when i was a kid.