Toilet Snakes are Real, along with a thankfully unrelated photo

There was a giant surprise in my toilet today.  It was red and white, striped and huge, I tell you, HUGE.  My worst middle-of-the-night fears were true: the toilet snake does exist.  In case you need to know, they're red and white striped and kinda mushy and slimy looking, and about four times the size of a gummy worm.

Claire still hasn't been eating well, so I've been letting her have anything she wants.  This morning included Diet Pepsi, cookies, and gummy worms.  (Don't worry, there were some healthier things in there, but I might win a MOTY for the previous list anyhow.)  So about five hours after her gummy worm snack, I happened to go to the bathroom, and that's when I found it had morphed into a toilet snake.  So now along with letting my child eat loads of junk food, I also somehow managed to not notice when she left the kitchen and went upstairs with a worm, put in the toilet, put the lid down and somehow rejoined us without me knowing anything was amiss.  I'm going to claim I was doing important things like snapping Owen's pants or laundry or maybe saving the world.  Then I won't feel so bad about the junk food in the toilet.

I think we're all grateful I didn't take a photo of that, but I did venture into my backyard during the rain today to get some photos of our beautiful purple tulips while they still last.  They are a bright spot in the giant weedy mess I call a backyard right now.