I'm watching Hotel Rwanda. Ooof.

I need to figure out shoes.

Just had an odd experience of texting with my brother to get him through his upset over losing his pet snake. I know he's drunk. I know he's belligerent when he's drunk. I know he's sensitive about his snake (Spike) being viewed as a useless pet in others eyes (including mine). I can only imagine what my father has been insensitively saying to him ("good riddance!") I know that telling him to chill and breathe will backfire. I know that telling him what to do and feel will backfire. I know that sounding like I wanted his emotions to fit my timetable would backfire.

Man, the past hour and half have been a minefield of picking out the right words that will at least get him to allow himself to stop beating himself up and feeling sick and get some sleep. But I have to say, it was worth it to read the final text of "I love you, sis!".

Aww, you're a good sis. May Spike rest in peace.

My Joseph Gordon-Levitt love has panned out in a way that my Frankie Muniz feelings never did. You can't win them all.

Sara, have you seen Hotel Rwanda before?

RIP snakey Spike.

J-Lo, what are you wearing? That is not flattering.

Then they took off the little robe? And it got worse.

Aaaaand now we've added a gold corsetybubbleshirt thing (via our dancers) and we're still. not. good.

No! Spike is still alive! Living wild in the half-dug basement!

That was a big part of the careful word-choosing. In my attempt to make him feel better, he replied with "Great, X amount of money is now lost in the basement." I must have gone through five drafts of how to make it not a money issue and give import to Spike's status as a valued pet, and that Spike's livelihood, even if apart from him, in the half-dug basement, was more important than the cost of the pet.

Hotel Rwanda was good, but heavy and hurty.

Oh, dear -- I jumped right to reading "losing" as euphemistic, rather than reading it as, well, losing. Either way, good on you for talking your bro through the crisis.

So Spike the Snake is not an ex-snake, but an escaped snake. Hey, he might come back. Basements are chilly. He might show up for a saucer of milk if the basement is mouseless and he's hungry.

Consider the cost of freedom, Brother Snake!

Heh, yeah, the snakes, they are wiley, and manage to escape the commercially patented escaped-proof tanks a bit too often.

This is escaped snake, and escaped SPIKE, number 2. I don't get snakes. I don't get his love for them, other than the cool gross factor. But at sixish months old Spike was able to tourniquet my hand pretty well, at only three-quarters an inch in diameter. If I can't hug the pet, or have a pleasant sensation petting it, Do Not Want.

But I remember when my cat got stuck inside the roof after playing in the crawlspace of the top floor, and I almost threw up over images of her rotting inside the walls, and got no sleep, and it may not be the same thing for him, and I may not understand the love, but it was his pet, and he lost it, and is probably feeling really shitty because it's the second time. I'm sure he's beating himself up enough about the lack loyalty in snakes, and I'm sure my father is too. (Not unlike the time he fell down the slippery stairs we have, and the first words out of dads mouth aren't "are you okay?" but "were you drinking?".