Erasmo committed suicide

He was looking a little forlorn yesterday, refusing to get out of his shell and eat food. Today G. found him submerged in his water bowl, his shell soft, his body lifeless. I am thinking of letting the rest of my snails free. Be free, little snail, I can't deal with your suicidal tendencies right now.

Snail Additions

Three more snails have been added to our snailarium; clockwise from the top: Pancho, No Name, and Full Speed Chola. No Name currently has no name, but you are free to give him one. If you need to know more about his character and size in order to give him a proper name I will tell you this: he/she is the smallest of our snail family, very shy, and not very sociable. Full Speed Chola is very inquisitive, very fast, very sociable. Pancho is in love with Full Speed Chola; she's a little bigger than him, but that doesn't seem to matter to him. I think Erasmo has been feeling a bit left out of the commotion as he refuses to have much to do with the little snails. Maybe I should get him a snail that is his size. I also decided to buy them a real home so now they live in a modded tupper ware tray.

Sackcloth and Ashes: My Uncle Dan

To say that he was loved and cherished would be to undervalue him. His phone calls were looked forward to with much anticipation; his visits even more so. He was a gentle, peace loving man who loved nothing more to have some drinks and listen to his salsa vieja on his huge ant¡que speakers. He helped me fix, paint and move into my first apartment, never complained and gave a helping hand (when the cement proved to be a a bit hard to drill into, he muttered esta vaina si ta dura chucha and kept right at it till the hole was drilled). I know he loved me very much and I can say the same for him. He was my grandfather's favorite son, favorite child, and we would tease him by saying that he was the anointed one as my grandfather would drop everything to be with him. He was well loved by the ladies as well. It was a combination of charisma, old school latin charm, and the Magnum P.I. mustache that they fell for. He was such a handsome man, but he was never cocky about it. He was ever so humble, ever so funny. He had a wicked sense of humor and could make me break out laughing even in the toughest moments. He would call from South Carolina whenever he knew that my mother and I were fighting to give me comforting words and to calm my mother down. He hated fights. He would do the same when my mother and grandfather were fighting. In fact he was the go to man when our house was in a tizzie, he was the referee, the man to put order to everything. He would calm everyone down. I don't know how my family is going to handle their arguments now. I don't know how my grandfather must be taking this, his first son, his favorite son, the son he would boast about to everyone, carrying a picture of him in his money holder. I don't know how my cousins are handling everything. Their father taken from them. They are all grownups, but it doesn't make it hurt any less. Who will take over his business? I wish I could be there for my family. I know this will affect everyone, every single one of them in a big way. This is so unexpected, so sudden. I couldn't even say goodbye. Nothing I can write here or anywhere could ever do him justice.

Erasmo

A snail has adopted us. I found him hanging upside down on our ceiling and left him there. The next day G. found him on the floor, his shell cracked. We've been nursing him back to health ever since then.



He lives on the potted basil plant we have. We feed him food from the table, veggies, egg shells, stuff like that. He particularly enjoys strawberries and eggshells.



We have named him Erasmo and are looking on line to find information on snail care. Apparently we need to scrub his shell with an old toothbrush and keep his environment moist, but not too wet. Erasmo is a helix aspera (common brown garden snail) and is usually a nuisance in gardens, though he hasn't eaten the basil yet.

Whale Beach

I've been posting a lot more to le blog because I don't have cable TV this year. I don't even have a TV unless you consider the 13 inch TV that came with the house a TV, 'cause I don't. Posting more is good, as I get to read a lot more information on the Internet that I find useful and interesting (as well as stuff on the Internet that is neither useful or interesting, just amusing) and then post it on le blog for someone else to find useful and interesting (or amusing). As it is I found an interesting website called Kitsune Noir that I check in on once in awhile as the guy who posts there has a variety of interesting web finds, most particularly on art and the like, though last week he posted a little blurb on something called Scribefire, that allows you to post directly from Mozilla Firefox. I found it interesting so I decided to download it and well, he was right. It's really handy, easy to use, and ever so practical.

Whale Beach

Back from the beach. More to come.