Bird is the Word...

.... but not one you want to hear at 2am.


A little revelation about life in the laundry pile. The Professor snores. 
The kids insist that I do and given my history of sinus issues, I just might. On the other hand, when I do snore, I wake myself up, adjust, and go back to sleep. 


When the Professor snores - He just sleeps right through it.  I, however, do not.


so out of the kindness of his sweet heart he often sleeps on the couch. 


It was that same sleeping arrangement was had going for us the night we were talking about 'the bird'. 


He came and got me about 2am. 'Comfy, the cat dragged in something and has it cornered. It's screaming. I could use some back-up.'


Great. Jack Oy, the Porch Cat strikes again. Through the doggy door he has delivered a frog and a crawdad. In the back yard, he's delived two small bunny carcasses for the dog to de-fuzz. 


Ew. 


I go toward this book shelf where the cat is pacing back and forth. The object of his attention is behind a stack of folders and clipboards. 


The professor sits on the couch. 


I thought I was the back up??


I pull the binders away until something jumps up at me. I yelp and hop back. My first thought was 'frog'. Then I discover that the screaming hopping thing in my house - is actually a small bird. 


not a baby as far as my eye can determine. just a small bird.


I should also mention that it's raining outside. Which might explain why the bird got in Jack's mouth and why Jack decided to bring it in to snack upon. 


I catch the bird between a clipboard and plastic container that had been discarded by a kid. I take him out front, but the entire thing on the porch. I take the plastic container back and step back. I didn't want him to decide to peck at me. 


Bird just sits there. 


He doesn't look broken. but What do I know?? 


I stare at him. He stares at me. 


I decide, 'Forget it. It's after 2 am. You're on your own.'


I wish him luck and go back inside. I flop back in the bed and hopefully I don't snore.


3am. "Comfy. The bird's back."


Swell. Just swell.


This time it's behind a fan and the fireplace.
This time it's got the attention of Gizmo. I guess the dog wanted to pull the feathers off the bird like he'd done to the bunny and its fuzz. (ew)


But darn it. I left my clipboard outside. So I get a cheap (ha!) plastic plate (For a flat surface)


Yes. 


Plate. 


The irony.


I get another plastic container and take Bird back outside.


This time I put him on top of our shrubs. I KNOW Jack can't climb on top of them. So if he's going to get to the bird, he's going to have to work at it.


Realizing that I've just served up a bird on a plate, I watch him to see if I can tell whether or not he's wounded. Jack is purring against my legs. 


I'm guessing he's grateful?
Or hopeful?


I wait a good 10 - 15 minutes. The bird just sits there. 


I decide that at this point, the bird can be cat food. I'm going back to bed. 


I go back inside and put the fan in front of the doggy door. If Bird gets eaten, it won't be inside. 


As I'm resettling myself back in bed, the storms open up and the rains pour out. Poor Bird won't be flying, I guess. But that also means Jack's gonna get wet. 


I figure it serves him right.


The Professor tells me that Jack was found scowling at the back door in the morning. 
The plate was still in place on the shrub and no bird carcass could be found.


I can only hope that the plate was a safe haven and not a serving platter. 


It's given us something to laugh about.
But we all agree... 


bird is not the word we want to hear in the middle of the night.

Looking for Yellow

If you remember (and if you don't that's cool, too) I have a thing for yellow.

It's the color of Hope.

When Toby mentioned looking for yellow after my last post, I started looking....and realized how boring my neighborhood really is. It's mostly green. and flat.

No yellow...and I wasn't sure where to drive to discover yellow... so I decided to discover yellow at home...

So what follows is part of my hunt for yellow...

Golden Delicious Apples - oh, look. Behind the faucet, a yellow scrubber handle

Yellow pages arrived just when I needed a picture of something yellow. Cool.

Pencils!

BananaGrams!! (Yes. I know the fish tank needs to be cleaned. shh. Focus on the yellow)

Yellow Fruit Roll ups

G-man's Rubber band ball, with Yellow rubber bands..

T-Bone

When I told the kids what I was doing - they offered to help. ... They offered TOO much... So I had to be selective...hard to do in this tiny room.

and then there is:

It's an underwater explorer vehicle...

Otherwise known as a yellow submarine...





And one thing I can promise..... whenever we're looking for hope in the midst of a struggle - The Sun really will shine. The waiting isn't easy - but I know it's out there..

What was that???

This...

This right here....


This post is my 600th post.

A moment, please.



Okay. Wow. You'd think I'd have more something deeper, more relevant for this moment in history -- but I don't. Life is life and I tend to find it to be boring to retell.

except for those moments that I hear stuff like, 'Everyone's got an evil laugh!"
that's fun..


So Here's what I SHOULD be doing... picking up and working through the edits on my Story "The Bounty of Grace" ..

Here's my distraction:::

And yes. I took these pictures with a camera because I wasn't sure how to screen shot. This was way easier..

I have 2 level capped characters -- and 4 others waiting to distract me with quests and adventure. It's fun. Especially since we don't watch a lot of TV (and way better than facebook games..just sayin')

It is completely and thoroughly distracting..

And there we go - you get a glimpse of my on-going challenge.
Happy 600th post to me!!

Happy 600th post reading to you!!! (and that's 600 on THIS blog - and doesn't count the old one.) (Speaking of which I should probably figure out how to download those entries..I might need them some day.)

letters and words

I don't know if y'all know the game "BananaGrams". It's a letter game that comes in a really cool banana shaped pouch. There's scoring involved if I'd bother to read the instructions. I haven't yet. I've got such competitive kids, games are not always a fun thing around here. 

I originally bought the game for me. I love word games. I'm the only one in the house that does. I have fond memories of growing up and playing Scrabble with my grandmothers. Crossword puzzles with them both. 

The Professor doesn't like word games. He claims it's because he's a terrible speller. I'm more likely to guess it's a game I can win at. He won't play gin with me because he's a card counter and wins all the time. 

I guess I'm not much of a challenge. 

Anyway - I bought the game for me. I bought it thinking we could have fun just putting words together. it would help with spelling. And reading. 

See? I was thinking.

but I never did it.

One day, I was going to make lunch and I dumped several handfuls of letters on the counter and made some words. Just to see how many words I could make with just the few handfuls of letters.

I came up with:

I know Squeak is misspelled. I was going to say 'squee' but ended up with an extra 'k'.

I wasn't worried about it. Not really. Except that I considered using it as my facebook status. That was worrisome. I blame Zonker on having no extra 's' and cartoons. 


So my words were done - it was time to make lunch. I told Mini-Me, 'here, you try. in the time it takes me to put the pizza rolls on the tray and get them in the oven, see how many words you can make.'


I even gave her all the letters. 

Mini-Me admits that 'nautilis' is the wrong spelling. but neither of us cared.

I wasn't worried about MY words, until I saw hers. After all... fiddle wax brain sex sound really elementary (Or juvenile) compared to THOSE. sheesh. 



My science brained kid showed me up. 



Five minutes. I gave myself five minutes to do better than my first try. (Of course, this time I was using ALL the letters.)

Zoop. in honor of how someone says 'soup'. It's fun to say it that way. Try it.

blink Blink. There it is. all the letters in five minutes with some left over. It's... MORE ... but ... 

I still laugh about 'fiddle wax brain sex' every time. 

Well Equipped

I had this post in the back of my mind .... then today I realized it's February. And I planned this out DAYS ago!!! I'm so surprised that time has gone by so quickly... What I thought was a few days has turned into a few weeks. Gah!!


So today I was looking something up - and remembered - "Oh, Hey! I have a blog!"

One day, J-man told me that he wanted to do something. 
He didn't want to play with his people.
He didn't want to  play any games..

"Well .. what DO you want to do?"

"Well, I dunno." (Shrug) (Sheepish grin)

"You want to clean your room?"
 
"No." 

They never do.

"What I want," he said, "is maybe, I dunno, go outside (Shrug) and swing...and talk about stuff."

"That's what you want to do?"

Big blue eyes look at me, "Yeah." He grins. "You have a mouth and a hiney."

I laughed. 

I'm well equipped.


We went outside in our unseasonably warm weather - and we talked about stuff.

 It was good.