rapunzel the hermit crab

I am having hermit crab-type thoughts this evening. A little girl who is a museum member came in yesterday, and brought us her pet hermit crab, "Rapunzel". Rapunzel arrived in a neon pink and sea-foam green swirly shell. Her owner felt it was time to bring Rapunzel in to live amongst others of her kind. We have a tank of hermit crabs, most of which are incredibly grumpy. But Rapunzel made herself right at home and decided to make a change....so she picked out a new shell and immediately moved right in. It was pretty neat to watch her make her way out of the pink shell and into the shiny mocha-coloured speckly shell. You could tell her owner didn't exactly want to leave, as she hung around the hermit crab tank for about two hours. Finally her mother convinced her they had to get home and make dinner.

Today I was meandering through the museum and some little kids from a local pre-school wanted to see the hermit crabs. Since no gallery staff were immediately available, and the elderly volunteers refuse to touch the crabs, I gladly took Rapunzel out of the tank and let her crawl around my hands and arm. She is quite friendly and very used to being handled, obviously. I like Rapunzel quite a bit and am glad we have her to play with.

Aside from thinking hermit crab-like thoughts, we got the news Greg has been absolutely dying to hear. He has been offered a job with the city police department. And rightly so, he applied earlier this year, then spent several months anxiously awaiting SOMETHING... finally got called in back in October, and has been through a slew of craziness; ranging from the Oral Boards to a polygraph test, to an extensive medical examination to timed physical tests. All the while thinking of creative reasons why he was missing time off from his current employment. But he passed with flying colours and I think the Department is mightily impressed that they have someone on their hands who has never done drugs or gotten any traffic violations whatsoever.

He gets sworn in on the 5th of January and proceeds to attend the Police Academy on the 9th. He is delighted with himself; I am thrilled that money issues will now be alleviated and between our new and improved salaries even paying that insane tuition for Catholic School won't be such a burden. We hope to begin house hunting within the next year. All I can say to that is... FINALLY!

The museum is closed tomorrow but I have to wait for Greg to be done at his work around noon-ish, then we can head down to R-Town to spend Christmas. Looking forward to the usual festivities, which will consist of Midnight Mass, following into Christmas morning hearing loud shouts of glee from Clare to get us all up and about to see what Santa left her. Which, I might add, is a ton of stuff.

At any rate, I am off to wrap some pressies and get some sleep. Every evening this week we have been out doing some sort of errand, or errands I should say. We are mad tired, to say the least!