it seems the mourning period has passed and we have a replacement hermit crab.

the former crab's name was nate. there is a nate that lives five doors down the street. this crab's name is sebastian. we have one of those four houses away. it seems alex has a thing for naming his pets after kids who live in the neighborhood. while i could jibe his lack of creativity, i prefer it over bella's motif. her monikers tend to more resemble quintessential stripper names (like krystal or cinnamon or pepper). so as it turns out, i'm rabidly supportive of naming pets after kids who live on our street.

after getting sebastian home i thought we should clean the habitat before introducing him to the mix. first impressions and all. we use a large, glass aquarium i found next to a dumpster when the college students were moving out a few years back. looking useful and being close to home i grabbed it up and threw it on a shelf in the basement. one curious thing i've noticed since we started using the aquarium is on the bottom corner of one of the long, front-facing sides there's a retro, red label that reads PLEASE DON'T FEED THE ARTIFACT. when i place the tank in the kids room, i always turn it so the label is on the backside. alex saw it during this recent cleaning and asked what the raised, white letters said. i told him. he asked what that meant. i told him i didn't know and i was reasonably certain it was something we were better off not knowing. being my son, that proved good enough for him.

(for those wondering why i don't just peel the label off removing the need to think about or explain its relevance, it's because then it would have less of a story than it does now.)