without wings

Tough day here.

At shortly before 3pm, I loaded my two youngest into the van to take them to the park and take pictures and play. My cel phone rang before I could pull away from our front curb and I could hear my oldest daughter's panicky voice talking about her pet bird having just fallen off her perch and was dead.

This is the second bird in as many weeks.

We are a bit shattered and in no small part because we just don't know WHY.

Four weeks ago we got a pair of canaries for my oldest daughter, two weeks and a hundred and thirty dollars in emergency vet bills later, the male died. We couldn't figure out why. We went over everything again and again.

The lady who gave us the pair, brought over another little male a few days later and gave us detailed instructions on helping the new pair - and she went over everything that might have caused a problem too - there was nothing any of us could figure out.

They were kept clean, they had fresh water and food everyday, they were covered at night, they were warm enough, had fresh veggies, played them classical music....

My poor girl.
She is so devastated.
She had just been sitting and watching them for an hour or so, when the little female gave an odd sound, fluttered her wings and fell to the bottom of the cage dead.

Now we have one.
I want to send him back to the Bird Lady he came from, I am so fearful he will die too.

Normally, I would say we are good with pets. We love them, we don't stint on their care, they are a huge part of our lives but right now I feel a little like we have been cursed.

It was made even more awful by my youngest daughter, who can not stand to have attention given to anyone else much of the time and now, as we lead up to her birthday she is barely holding together emotionally. She struggled desperately to make the drama all about her.
And I am already sick to death of her because she is caught up in making sure I don't go anywhere without her and if I do she makes everyone else (particularly her siblings) suffer till I come back. She stares at me and follows me constantly except when we are out at a social function and then she acts like I don't exist. I must be under her control at all times and I must prove over and over again that I won't leave but she is going to do everything in her power to make me miserable so I will leave.


And we lowered her ADHD med dosage so she is far more unfocused and impulsive, because she wasn't sleeping hardly at all and looked like a zombie for the last few weeks.

Her bio brother is taking his cue from her and they are winding each other up into high pitched, frenzied giggling behaviours that go on and on and have no point or meaning.

Oh and our guinea pig has cancer.
Seven years old, which is like incredibly freaking old for a gpig.
BTW, a vet checkup, xray and antibiotics for a guinea pig, that is 270 bucks that was Wednesday.

Sigh.

Same old, same old - just really intense right now.

Did I mention that I am training for a 50k run.
Because I am nuts?
But if I don't train for it, I think I will go nuts that much faster?

Not all bad, not by a long shot.

Just tired, and sad and tired, and rubbed raw and tired and overwhelmed by a world where little birds die for no apparent reason, little girls are left behind by their Moms and don't/can't even begin to process it.