Side note

Guinea pigs drink from the standard small pet bottle. It has a spout with a ball valve - they can push the ball in with their tongue to get water out. The rats I had as a pet (MUCH better pets than guinea pigs, should you be in the market for a pet) would just lick at the valve and get water very efficiently. The guinea pigs put their WHOLE MOUTH over the spout and bumble around for water. Every time I see them doing this, especially Snufkin, who is large and generally inept, I think of Parks and Recreation.

Kids these days

I've been reading a book about how screwed millennials are, and what I'm gleaning from it* seems like it will dismally apply to Duchess and Skipper.

Also, Duchess and her phone. Ugh. She's constantly holding it and staring at it. Last night I made her turn it off earlier than usual, and she was such delightful company - she played a stupid card game with Skipper, manically and amusingly did a dance and voice interpretation of my uterus, and worked on a crossword with Cook.** I've missed her.

*Kids are having to work increasingly hard on training themselves and making themselves more valuable resources in order to compete with each other for increasingly unstable and poorly paid jobs. This is bad.
**I have fond memories of doing crossword puzzles with my friend in middle school, in the Eugene Maleska era. That's how I learned the word "ort."