We barely got any work done, today, and it’s my (Arielle’s) fault.

We were supposed to be working on Chapter 34 (which I’m in the process of totally rewriting) and Chapter 35 (from which I will soon be removing all sentence fragments and run-on sentences). I started work on Chapter 34 yesterday, and Thierry sent me his updated version of Chapter 35 this morning (while I was asleep, causing the little notification on my phone to go “ping,” which doesn’t really seem fair, now, does it?) This should have been an easy work day. We should have completed all the things on my to-do list in record time and moved on with our literary lives.

We didn’t.

See, yesterday, after finishing a couple of chapters, we both needed a break from our computer screens. We stepped out for a few minutes and went over to the Petco to buy some new fish for Thierry’s pond, as several of the fish had tragically passed away in the middle of the previous night.

I’m a small animal kind of girl, and every time I go to the pet store, I rush immediately over to look at the little hamsters and the guinea pigs (of which I own two already) and the rats and bunnies.

After gazing at the guinea pigs for a few minutes, I turned around to find Thierry with his eyes glued to the Roborovski hamster cage. You have never seen a man with such a dazzling, genuinely delighted smile on his face as Thierry had while watching those funny little hamsters.Those of you who read his blog will be aware that smiles have been few and far between, lately.

The course of action here was clear, to me at least.

“Thierry,” I said, “let’s get those hamsters.”

He was shocked. He was alarmed. He utilized his famous gallic shrug, protested that it was not a good idea to make such split second decisions, that bringing a new life (two new lives!) into his home was a big responsibility that he was not necessarily ready to accept, that the cat might object, etc, etc.

I insisted. He eventually suggested that we wait until the following day, and that we then make a more rational, potentially further informed decision.

I knew I had won.

Just to make sure, I texted him last night with adorable hamster photos, so that he wouldn’t, you know, forget how much he really wanted them.

Today, we went and bought the hamsters. Well, actually, no; we went to the store, bought a hamster mansion (this thing is huge!) and I sat on the floor and provided essentially useless but well-meant encouragement while he put the thing together. We then checked several different stores to find exactly the RIGHT pair of robos, and we are now sitting at our desks in his basement, preparing to complete our work on today’s chapters while the little hamsters run frantically around in their cage on the dresser beside me.

There is only one remaining problem, really; our hamsters/tiny little literary muses don’t have names!

I have to get some work done. While I’m plowing through chapter 36, can you help us name them? Please either leave a response to this post or leave a post on either of our facebok walls to make hamster name suggestions.

Note: They are both boys.