Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

That quote is by John Lennon and how it is so true sometimes! Take this for example: Last Saturday I had a few projects planned ... cleaning out and painting the first 1/3 of the garage floor,

painting the artwork frame in the upstairs bath

and staining this bench and sprucing up the basement patio where it sits.

And THAT is where the quote comes in! ... Here's my excuse reason for not doing my projects...

On Saturday I went down to the basement and noticed a musty smell and that the de-humidifier was not running. So, being the wonderful Mr. Fix It that he is, Mr. DIY Fanatic went down to the basement a few hours later that evening & the hose was clogged so the water couldn't automatically go down the sump pump and the bucket was full. He takes the bucket out of the dehumidifier  and goes to dump it in the tub and I hear him call my name really dragging it out with his voice rising at the end of it ...."Paaaaaaaam"? 

So, I go into the bathroom and look into the tub and see a cute little baby opossum. I immediately text my girls. Jess comes running down two flights of stairs from her room to see it.

Thinking there might be more, we went into the storage room and old playroom to look and sure enough, out comes another, then another. Jess put on gloves and started putting them in the tub one by one until

There were NINE!!!

We had been so busy picking up the babies that we hadn't gone into the closed off unfinished part of the basement where we keep my cat Buddy. (it's a long story as to why we keep him down there, too). Buddy had been spending the last 3 weeks outside, since we thought he was leaving puddles in his (1400 sq ft unfinished) room. But, we soon realized that he wasn't the culprit, it was the mama opossum. She had gotten in there when we left the window open for Buddy to come in and out, but when we kept him outside when the weather turned warm and we locked the window, the mama opossum was trapped inside. With all my busyness- going to Los Angeles and Prom, I didn't get down to clean the basement. I probably wouldn't have seen the mother anyway during the day because opossums are nocturnal.

So, to get to the point of why I didn't get to my projects ...Since the babies are too small to release and we have to keep them for a few weeks, Mr. Fanatic built them an impromptu cage out of scrap lumber he had. 

Then we spent most of Sunday cleaning and disinfecting our entire 2000 square foot basement! Only 400 sq ft of it is finished and the babies weren't in that part of it ... much.

Today, I am finally getting to my projects :)

How's that for an excuse!!!

So, do you think the baby possums are cute or creepy???? It's funny, but they have different personalities. There is one who is the defender of them all who is always snarling and a really cute one Jess named Lulu who is sweet, doesn't ever snarl and lets you pet her. She also likes to be at the top of the heap of possums and is very adventurous. I guess I never thought of possums having any type of personality.

Pam 

P.S. Did you know that opossums are the only marsupials in North America?

Click HERE to see the day we released them into the woods.