The most ignored blog in the entire world!

I guess that would be this one - is this better guys? I've been negligent. I shall do my best to correct it. In my defense I forgot my password. Jeanne didn't let that one slide though LOL.

So OK I saw the post about the hardest thing you did this past week. At least I think it was for this passed week... was it for this past week??

My Hardest Thing:

The silly turtle is now in my living room. I am irked that Ralph the turtle is here. But other than the manual labor of moving the big tank down from the bonus room to the living room, which in and of itself was hard and also included a necessary deep cleaning of everything and rebuilding the tank, was the necessary acknowledgement on my part. What is it that I am babbling about?

Ralph is a red eared slider. He is an aquatic turtle. I can't remember how long he's lived with us. Do y'all remember how long Ralph has lived with us? It's been awhile. We went through a lot of extra effort when we moved to bring the turtle with us. He swam in hotel room bathroom tubs for heavens sakes.

So now - there are absolute minimum requirements for his care like water, and his turtle light so that he gets a healthy basking, and you know .. FOOD. When we moved he went up in the bonus room halfway between the kids area and my scrap area. Long story short on how Ralph came to live with us - Ralph is Cassie's turtle.

Well I started checking on Ralph. There would be days when his water was way too low, days where I would come in and his lights would never get turned on, and from this I can interpolate that there were days where he never got fed. My first step was to make sure he got his evening lettuce. With stern lectures to make sure he had enough water when you gave the lettuce. This was met with moaning, complaining and if she was in a bad mood general nastiness and if I was not nagging, did not lead to any improvement in the turtle care.

So now y'all are saying to yourselves - Parkie you should just have made her give the turtle away. If anyone remembers the condition Ralph was in when he got to us - and everything we went through to get him to start acting like a turtle - and as silly as it sounds I consider Ralph a special needs turtle. You know what a softie I am when it comes to animals. Am I babbling again?

I didnt' want to move him. I really didn't want him in the living room. But the hardest part of the whole thing was that despite everything. All my talks and pleadings, everything I've demonstrated to her about my beliefs in responsibilities of animal care, I had to acknowledge that Cassie, if left on her own, would let that turtle die. And that hurts. It really hurts.