D'Arcy Developments

D: Do dandelions really make wishes come true?
C: Sure, but it depends on what you wish for.
D: Like how? All the things I've ever wished for haven't worked. Have you had wishes come true?
C: Yeah, some...So what kind of things have you wished for that haven't come true? (thinks: do i want to know the answer to this question? His dad and I are never going to reconcile, the cat is dead...)
D: Well... um....(quietly) a toy air rifle with real bullets.
C: Ah (sighs). The problem you have here is that the wishing fairy isn't going to give you anything that your mum and dad don't want you to have.
D: So, what can I have?

This is a moon model made out of plasticine and paper. It went to school to be admired by the multitudes, and got the sign written there.

D'Arcy:"Can i grow an avocado seed?"
Me: "Sure"
D'Arcy: "How?"
Me: "Well, how about in a pot with some soil?"
Beloved: "How about we stick some toothpicks in it and suspend it in a jar of water?"
D'Arcy; "Cool"

So we did. No real action yet, beyond the splitting of the bottom of the seed - we keep expecting to see a root pushing out into the water, but not at this stage. We wait. And top up the water every now and then.

Dean and Ampersand Duck have both posted graffiti recently. I saw these a week or so ago on the way to a friend's exhibition opening, and took a photo. Late at night, with a flash. Not bad.

Well, it finally happened. Despite her great improvement the week after the first visit to the vet, Nippy went downhill again. So on Wednesday it became obvious that we needed to go back to the vet. I explained to D'Arcy that there probably wasn't anything that Mary-Anne (the vet) could do for Nippy now, and that she was going to die soon. I went on to talk about the injection that the vet could give her to help her to die more quickly and easily, rather than the slow and painful version she was currently experiencing. D'Arcy was not happy with this as an idea. He's generally very frightened and worried about death, so to him. something that might make you die faster, is a bad thing. Now in some ways, that is an attitude that I can understand, and I know I have to support him - aren't all 5 year olds afraid of death and dying? that doesn't change the fact though, that we had a terminally ill cat with end stage renal failure. She had stopped eating and was having great difficulty drinking, could get around a bit ("look mum, she can still ski herself") and walk a few steps.

So by Wednesday afternoon I couldn't really take it any more. I pretty much knew what was going to happen. We took her to the vet, who said "it's time. there's really nothing more we can do for her". We cried D'Arcy and I, and went out into the waiting room (I wanted to stay, but D'Arcy did not) and then they brought her back out, wrapped in a towel in her carrying box.

We brought her home and buried her in the garden, in a nice place, dappled sun. We cried as we dug her grave, and cried as we put her in. We noticed how strange her body felt, now that she wasn't in it anymore. We talked about what a great cat she was, what we love about her, what we missed, and we stroked her fur a lot. He made a lovely cross out of sticks from our big chinese elm, and put it on her grave.

Immediately afterwards, D'Arcy wanted to dig her up and see how she was going, but I reminded him that she would be all covered in dirt. "We could brush it off" was his solution. Then he wanted to swing on his rope, and after that he wanted to dig her up again.

We went through this a few tims in the next few days, with the interest gradually waning until yesterday we didn't go out to see her at all, and when his dad came to pick him up and asked "Do you want to show me where you buried Nippy?" the answer was an uninterested "Nah".

The amusing post script to all of this (because with a 5 year old there is always one) is that on Friday when we went to K-Mart D'Arcy said to the check-out chick "My cat died". She made sympathetic noises, upon which he said "Yes, the vet killed her".

I thought I'd write a post about the cat, but I'm aware that that is not a new concept.

She is feeling better, is up to pissing on the floor, but is also eating more now. When I took her back to the vet after a week of being at my house the vet asked "is this the same cat you brought me a week ago" on that visit we didn't think she'd last the week. This time she said "you could get another 12 good months out of her". Of course D'Arcy is happy about this. He's also thrilled that she is here at my place. She stays inside all the time, on the grounds that she's so old she'd be unable to defend any kind of territory, but she could still catch and eat things. She also gets freaked out by going outside, and tends to piss inside more.

School is getting better for D'Arcy. His reading is improving, he now sounds out words (and often works them out) before he says "I don't know" and uses some little mnemonics to remember the everyday words you see a lot (t-h-e spells the and the) which is good.

He's making friends better now the cliques are relaxing a bit. Most of the kids in his class went to either one of two govt preschools, I think D is the only one who didn't go. So the first few weeks the kids who went to preschool A only hung with each other and the same with the kids from preschool B. Fortunately some of the kids fromm preschool A also went to D'Arcy's child care, so he knew them, and could kind of hang on the outside of the clique. Well, now the kids from preschools A and B are playing with each other, and including D'Arcy. He's had lots of invitations to go around and play at other kids' houses, and we've invited some around too. It's still that thing where I'm trying to figure out whether I want to be friends with the mums of the kids he wants to be friends with. So far the one he's played with most, I'm not really drawn to but I sould give it time really. I tend to be a bit harsh a lot of the time when I meet new people (worried that they don't like me mostly) so I fail to act in a friendly and welcoming manner for a long time. Gotta change that I s'pose.