Obese magpie

Breakfast in the Bird Park and once again, the magpies are loading up with peanuts, sometimes flying off with two in a beak, while the cautious crows look on. Actually, the magpie are not really obese, well there is one. I just like the image. I want to shout, "Come on! Grab a goodie before everything's gone" as one crow finally begins inching in sideways toward the kibble but no. Can't do that. They tolerate me through the window but otherwise our relationship is pretty tenuous.

The cool thing is that Minerva the crow is here this morning. She's been a Bird Park regular for years. You might wonder how I know but I have my ways. Actually, it's not all that mystical. She has that feather protruding from her right wing and her companion has a distinctive brown feather in her right wing. Her/his? I don't know. Maybe they're siblings but, in any case, they are out there right now and Brownie has finally grabbed a beakful of kibble and flown off. Breakfast in bed for the chillens? I am so going to miss this. Yes. I am looking forward to London and Paris. We leave on the 21st. I'm not addled, for Christ's sake, but I am also very attached to my bird friends. Awww well. It's spring so they won't be out there foraging in the snow anyway and Penny Robin, who had to have her apple first thing in the morning, has already gone back to higher ground.

Oh. It's just you.

That's the response I get from a lot of the birds out in the Bird Park when I sit down at my computer, as I did just now. Before they figure out it's just me they do that little crouch birds do before launch then they notice it's just me, straighten up and go back to their business. I'm flattered.

Other than that, the feeling in the house among us two humans is as though we are drawn up into a great wave that is, in six days, going to come crashing down around us. Ready or not, we leave on Friday and will be gone until the end of July.

So, last week M. Lee decided to paint the house alone by hand. It's been on the project list for a few years. At this point, were you to ask, he might say he underestimated the job. In any case, it has upped the pressure about a thousand degrees. Other than that, for me, traveling is always preceded by great, amorphous anxiety and I am fully in it. I worry about the birds. Don't even say it. I know how pathetic that sounds, as though I am Mother Nature incarnate.They are wild. They will, somehow, survive my absence. My regret, in part, is purely selfish. Currently, a group of red wing blackbirds are regular customers at Bird Park and all day long they fill the silence with their charming conversation. This is the first time they've been regulars and, of course, they will be long gone when we get back. I know that's nothing but it at least it distracts me from the anxiety of what I'll forget to do or bring and how horrible that 10 hour flight is going to be.

Anyway, thanks for listening, if you got this far. I don't know why but it helps to write about it but it does and, like the message in the bottle, it's comforting to think there is another shore. Now I've gotta go. I've got a list of things to do. Have a great day.

Ringtones for a weeping eye

My poor left eye is not doing nearly as well as my right eye after its cataract removal last week. I have a post-op with the doctor tomorrow so we'll see but I'm not too worried. The results are still within what he has explained are "normal" even though at the moment it feels like there's a stick jammed into the side of my eye. Last week was simple, in and out, but today I came home with a terrible headache and a blood shot eye oozing rubbery pus and surrounded by dried blood. Sorry for the gory details. I just report. So, I spent the afternoon downloading ringtones for my phone. I got some cool ones, a couple which I will share with you in hope of making up for the gory details I have inflicted you with. I'd post more but zedge.net is currently too busy to access. Sci-fi Creepy is one of my all-time favorites. My daughter has had it on her phone for a couple of years and I was delighted to finally stumble across it this afternoon.


Get this on your phone | Make your own free ringtones


Get this on your phone | Make your own free ringtones

The difference between crows and magpies.

Here at the Bird Park crows jump down out of the air with a ground shaking, window rattling THUD, straighten their feathers, then assess the situation before committing to anything further. Magpies, on the other hand, careen out of the air, hit the ground running, taper off in a sometimes stumbling bounce to a brief pause before dashing off, grabbing a peanut or bit of kibble and flying away.

Good-bye smoker's teeth world. Hello London.

At the moment, I'm halfway through the two part process of cataract removal. The right eye was done yesterday. Amazing! The walls in our house aren't smoker's teeth yellow after all. They're white! And the fence in the Bird Park? The wood has a lovely grain. One thing. I have occasionally noticed the curve of the new lens along the outside corner of my vision. I hope that goes away but, no matter what, next Tuesday we're doing the left eye.  

Now for the summer travels countdown part of this ongoing, chaotic account of my life accompanied by a fair amount of anxiety. Not for the trip itself, five weeks in London, five weeks in Paris. That should be really interesting and fun. It's the preparation that makes me crazy and I am currently fully in The Crazy, with an extra dose of anxiety for the flight itself, a two-part adventure beginning with that restless night before the flight. We get up about 4 am for the kick-off flight to LA on May 21 followed by a several hour layover before the 10 hour flight to London arriving 8 hours ahead of our biological clocks so we'll do what travelers do. Stay up to catch up. But more on all this later.

Moving Day

We were recently in Portland helping my son Jack move his family into their first very own home.

Mista Leo packed right along with the rest of us but took...

...personal responsibility....

....that his prize soccer ball...

...made it safely...

 ...to their new home.

Faerie Court

No gender bias in her house so what a surprise when, completely on her own, Thea has fallen in love with the color pink and swirly dresses and takes very seriously the idea of being a Princess in the Faerie Court.

Faerie Princess Thea

Faerie Princess Nevada

Of course, Nevada is only to happy to play along. If ever a dog were a faerie princess it would be Nevada.

Morning from the backroom

Comma Coffee is constantly changing.

Can you spot the new parlor grand piano?
Clue: look for the shinny flat surface.

In fitting Comma fashion,
the old upright is now on the wall.

 Back in the back.

"Women and children first"

MITT ROMNEY:
"THROW 'EM OVERBOARD!
NO LIFEBOAT,
NO LIFE VEST FOR YOU!"

Republican version of women and children first then the world.

Here's Romney's proposal:

• Make contraception less available to poor women by getting rid of Planned Parenthood.

• Make the option of abortion illegal by signing a Personhood Amendment.

• Make access to prenatal care and pediatric care less available by gutting Medicaid.

• Then force mothers out of the home so that they can't even raise their own children.

• Gut public K-12 education.

• Gut grants for College Education.

• Continue outsourcing jobs to third world countries where people will work for .50 a day.

• Gut Medicare and Social Security.

• Gut the environment upon which life as we know it depends.