A-Changin'

This has been a scary week.  Let me tell you why.

It began on Friday afternoon, while my hubby was out with his boyfriend on man-date.  I was home with the kids.  We live at the bottom of a very steep hill that has a surprising amount of traffic considering we live on the rural end of the suburbs.  However, our yard is gated, and our yard is big and full of enough exciting things to keep the kids occupied.  Kids need the out of doors, right?

Both the monkeys paraded out the front door.  I checked on them just after that to find them playing in the sand box, taking turns dumping sand into a bucket.  Exciting!  I headed back inside to answer a phone call.

Moments later, thankfully, the hubby came home.  The kids had figured out our increasingly complicated gate latch and were playing in the road.  Freakouts ensued - we had a frank talk with our four year old (the likely Einstein that figured out how to get the rubics cube of a gate latch open) about what happens when little boys play in a busy road.  ("Oh no!!!  Cars will CRASH me?  I could DIE?!?!")  Needless to say, the whole family was pretty upset about it for the rest of the weekend.  The latch on the gate got even more complicated.

Decapitated Coral Snake.

Then my husband found a coral snake in the yard.  As in cousin of the black mamba and cobra, one of the most poisonous snakes in the US coral snake.  He dispatched it quickly, and I did some quick research on it. First, if one of these little bastards bites an adult, they need medical treatment within two hours.  Second, if it bites a toddler, all bets are off.  Third, bites are so rare that antivenom is almost impossible to find (it was discontinued three years ago).

So the urge to move is greater than ever.  We live on a street that has claimed the lives of two of our cats, and nearly took out our children.  We're finding poisonous snakes slithering about.  Exit stage left.

We've been poking at houses in the neighborhood for the last month.  I don't think we're asking for much, but apparently we have to choose between a nice house with a yard the size of a walk-in closet or a great yard attached to house that is dingy and smells suspiciously like prunes and cat pee.  Today's find was an exception.  It's not in our immediate neighborhood, but it's actually on the other side of the giant traffic-causing disaster, walking distance from a new Whole Foods AND a Torchy's AND a P. Terry's AND Max's school, and has highly rated schools all the way up.  And it's cheap.  Surprisingly cheap.  Score.  A disastrous economy has its perks.  Our earnest little realtor that we've somehow inherited is eagerly drafting paperwork.