The snails' ongoing egg strike despite their bountiful, warm terrarium in the greenhouse and ample food, not to mention my stalwart protection against the forces that would eat them is really quite a drag.
Still, the silkworm eggs are resting comfortably on the heating blanket and with any luck will hatch next week.
And then on Tuesday I received a gift of a circulating-air, automatic turner incubator. It arrived unboxed during class, so I had to explain what it was. What with the forces of cute present, I found myself committing to attempting a hatchery providing iron-clad, signed-in-blood "I will take these chickens off your hands on May 27th, 2011 without complaining" contracts enforceable by law, moral code, and so on.
It took less than a day for a child to arrange just such a contract. Apparently the cute works at home, too.
I now have 30 fertile eggs sitting in my pantry and more or less managed to regulate the incubator temperature on Friday, so all systems are go for a Monday afternoon setting.
I have a bad feeling that the social studies standard I haven't covered yet is going to get really short shrift with all the science going on. That said, we are doing a school performance covering the virtue of patience and will be using our life cycle knowledge and waiting waiting waiting to craft it.
In other news, I decided that appropriate souvenirs would include both a dress and an exhibition catalogue and ordered the latter in advance so I don't have to lug it around. I also arranged some visits with grad school cronies and similar who are New York-based. These plans will provide serenity/mindfulness moments during the next two months of being covered in paint, soil and incubator-temperature-regulation stress.
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