feeling like a champ after baking and icing a few trays of gluten free gingerbread. i used pre-made, store-bought dough and icing, just to get something done. the dough is tasty and easy to roll, and i really should have taken both of the two packages left at the second supermarket i went to. actually, i popped in the first one just to be sure to get the dough and they were all out! of course i came out with a bunch of other stuff not on the shopping list... as one does.
i need to make a note somewhere because i never remember to roll this stuff thin enough and end up with puffed up gingerbread. luckily i like 'em chunky and chewy. they could use a bit more colour, although they don't brown as much as regular ones anyway.
just before 6 AM this morning, i was awoken by small hands in my hair and wondered, for a split second, how on earth the rat had managed to get out of his cage. then i realized the hands were very, very tiny, and that it was déjà vu from some years back, when i slept on a mattress on the floor and a vole was combing through. sure enough, there was the same pitter-patter of puny paws escaping when i moved my head. i wonder whether it's a third one or the same, come back from the forest twice... the voles aren't that bad compared to mice, but i worry about basu catching some disease. i've been a little on edge since paroni died, and now every little sneeze makes my heart skip a beat.
i'm still undecided whether to get another rat or not. there are so many variables to take into consideration, starting with the possibility of basu not even accepting a newcomer. then i might have to adopt a third rat to keep that one company, and i really wasn't planning on having any more in the first place. rats are lovely but the heartbreak of losing them is too much all too soon. yet i keep checking pictures of baby rats (never a good idea) on breeders' websites and thinking that it might be all right. i've got the big cage and all. if i drove a car and it was easier to manage the logistics of everything, then maybe...
in an ideal world we would get another lonely old boy, they'd become tight friends and die peacefully in their sleep at the same time, at an awesomely old age. santa, if you read this, that is my wish.
