Bunny Drunk

We have had these little baby bunnies for a week now.  They are off formula and totally on plants now and they are getting chubby.  I CANNOT STAND HOW CUTE THEY ARE.  It almost kills me.  They are generally pretty mean and feisty, but every so often they like to be snuggled and I hold them in my two hands up next to my face and rub their fur across my face and get completely intoxicated.  Bunny drunk. Sometimes I can even get bunny drunk just watching them eat and groom themselves.  They do that thing where they lick their paws and then clean their heads.  Jesus.

We have been letting them run around the yard to get used to outside lately.  We want to get them to be able to successfully run away and hide.  One of them succeeded tonight.  He got away from Kira and hid in the woods and she couldn't find him.  She crawled out of the brush full of scrapes with twigs in her hair and no bunny.  I hope he lives a long and productive life and I see a million of his babies hopping around here for years to come.

I took one of them outside today and tried to get him to hop away.  He wouldn't.  I laid down on the grass next to him and he just kept hopping up to me and eating grass right next to me.  Uh oh.  So then I stood up and tried to spook him a little.  I nudged him with my foot and he reared up and bared his teeth like he was going to fight with my foot. Crap.  I said, "You are a FLIGHT animal, not a FIGHT animal!  Hop away in an evasive manner!  Zig!  Zag!"  He didn't.  He just braced himself for a fight so I picked him up and brought him back in the house.  He was biting me the whole time. That one is as mean as a little snake.  No, I've had little snakes and they weren't nearly this aggressive and mean.

"Roar!"

New Babies!

Mitch mowed under some stuff yesterday that hasn't been mowed under for quite a while and he found a wild rabbit nest.  I won't go into the details about that except we now have three baby bunnies!  Yay!

Normally I would be nervous about raising wild baby animals, but there is something you probably don't know about me: I am a rabbit whisperer.  I don't like to brag.  I raised a wild baby bunny several years ago and it was way smaller than these babies are.  He grew up and went off into the wild and I am sure fathered several generations of rabbits.  These bunnies are probably his great great great great great great great great (ad infinitum) grandbunnies.  I bet he is still hopping around out there somewhere remembering fondly his time with his human mother.

These babies are at least three weeks old, and would probably be fine out in the wild by themselves but there has to be some transition between being all snug in a nest to traumatically not being all snug in a nest, right?  I'm going to keep them for a while, feed them some kitten formula and freshly picked dandelion greens and let them grow a little and then set them free.  Maybe.

I was reading some stuff on the internet about caring for baby bunnies and one of the sites said I should let nature take its course and leave them alone because they would be better off without my interference. Maybe their mother would meet up with them again and they would be fine???  That's supposedly better than having me for a mom?  Please.  I might not be the greatest parent in the world but I am a way better mother than a rabbit.  Has a rabbit ever successfully raised two human babies?  No, but I have. And I have a dwelling free (mostly) of parasites and mosquitoes not made (primarily) with my own body hair.  If a rabbit has a question about raising a rabbit, can it Google it?  No.  They can't even read. Can a rabbit offer these babies protection from predators (and lawnmowers)? Obviously not.  Would their bio mom sit and cuddle with them while watching several episodes of Orange Is The New Black?  No.  Rabbits don't get Netflix.  Can you imagine: No Netflix??? Jesus.

So these babies are going to hang out with me for while, burrowing deeply into my robe sleeves, eating, and growing.  Then we'll see about transitioning them to the next stage in their lives which hopefully won't include getting eaten by raccoons.

Oh also, in the middle of the night I heard something on the deck so I got up to look and it was three baby raccoons eating dog food out of Maisy's dish.  They were cute but fiendish.

Family Secrets

When I was little my dad had a rabbit hutch in the back yard where he raised New Zealand white rabbits.  I loved it because what little girl doesn't like a big box full of bunnies? 

Our hutch was very much like this except it was painted green. 
The point is there was plenty of room to walk around underneath and get at the rabbit turds.

I loved playing with the baby bunnies and it never really occurred to me that they weren't multiplying like proverbial rabbits.  There always seemed to be enough, but not too many.  I never gave it a second thought.

On a totally different subject: when I was a kid we ate a LOT of chicken. 

And it was always in pieces.  Never a whole chicken like I saw on cartoons.

When I asked my mom why we never had a whole chicken her answer was, "This is a different kind of chicken."  I never thought about it again.  I was too busy having an ideal childhood playing with my baby bunnies and marveling how their turds looked so much like Coco Puffs. 

Then when my sisters and I were grown, we were teasing my mom, telling her about all the times we snuck out of the house, and where we really were when we told her we were at a friend's house, or at a church lock-in, or at "prom."  

She didn't think it was funny. 

Then she said, "Remember all that chicken we ate when you were kids?"  We didn't know where she was going with this.  One of us said, "Way to change the subject, Mom! Yeah, what about it?"  She said, "It wasn't chicken, it was New Zealand white rabbits.  From the back yard."

We were stunned.  In retrospect, it was pretty obvious.  When the rabbits got big enough to scratch and not be so fun anymore, they disappeared.  But still, it was a shocker.  As we sat there with our mouths hanging open, thinking about the fate of all the poor Thumpers, Mom said,  "Want to keep telling secrets?"

We didn't.

Mmmmmmmmmm.....deliciousssssss..........

On another totally different subject, we had a LOT of good luck when we were kids.  I attribute it to the lucky rabbit's feet that were so ubiquitous in the 1970s. 

Hey Sarah, what stinks?

It's me.  I'm the one who stinks.  I don't think we realize how important smells are until our lives are ruined by a bad one.  A few years ago sewer gas seeped into our house for a few days and I can't even tell you how many hundreds of times I considered burning the whole place down.  And now I can honestly say that since my dog got sprayed THREE times in a ROW in the FACE by a skunk last week, I love her less.

I love her less because I can barely tolerate the stench I think will probably follow her (and me) around for the rest of her life.  I love her less because she was stupid enough to get sprayed three times, not that it would make that much of a difference smell-wise if she only got sprayed once, but how dumb was that?  If a skunk sprayed you in the face, would you keep chasing it?  I thought border collies were supposed to be smart.  Not this one.  I love her less because she didn't have the decency to wait until the skunk left the deck before she harassed it, so the first time it sprayed her it also sprayed the house, the deck furniture, and the door.  I don't think she thought the whole thing out very well.   SO inconsiderate.

If it was summer I would shave her bald to get rid of the offending fur that is carrying the stench, but no, it's fall so I suppose it would be considered animal cruelty to shave her naked right before winter.  Also, one time I cut her hair short and she looked ridiculous and slinked around in utter embarrassment for about six months while it grew out.  She's very vain so I bet this whole debacle is pretty bad for her too.  I cut off the worst of the hair, around her mane, and she looks pretty silly.

Since I had the scissors out there cutting grossness off of her, I also cut her butt hair because in another example of how stupid the theory of intelligent design is, the hair right around her anus grows longer than any hair on her whole body.  I don't think I have to tell you why that is gross.  Now she looks like she has a radical bob haircut on her butt.  I kind of like the way it looks, but judging by the way she tucks her tail between her legs everywhere she goes, she does not like it.  She would NOT let me take a picture of her back end.  Every time I got her to stand and then pointed the camera at her she would sit.  See?  She seems pretty smart!  But she's not.

Just so she wouldn't feel so alone I also got a bad haircut.  My sister sent me a great picture of my dad yesterday and my hair looks just like his in that picture.

Of course, he is in his sixties and is working outside in the rain so the style is understandable on him.  On me it just looks weird.  So now both Maisy and I smell bad and look weird.  For a while.  Someday the stench will fade, and the hair will grow out, and we will be back to our old sweet-smelling, gorgeous selves.  But probably not for about a year.  

I Might Be Really Sick

Something is happening to me and I don't like it.  My skin is raw and tender and dry, and my tongue is so tender and chapped that I could barely eat the chili cheese Fritos I had with my lunch.  Barely.  I'm actually kind of regretting the Fritos because I don't think they were worth all this pain.  Mitch says that it sounds like an allergy and I said, "But what in the world could I be allergic to???" and he suggested it's the neighbor's dog that I have stolen made friends with.

I let her in our house every night to sit on my lap and watch TV (we like the same shows).  Mitch isn't crazy about it because he is afraid we are going to get busted by the neighbors and he's sure that she will just happen to be on Mitch's lap when the angry neighbor looks in the glass door and sees his dog with her new family.  I don't think I'm allergic to her.  I'm not allergic to dogs, Mitch, I mean, "DOCTOR."  And my tongue is the most affected part of my body and I don't lick the dog.  You'd think if I was allergic to her I would have itchy hands or an itchy lap, but I don't, Dr. Oz; I don't.

If I was going to self-diagnose (which I always do) I would guess that I probably have the beginning stages of leprosy or scurvy.  Or maybe Vitamin D poisoning.  Mitch, are you lacing my food with extra Vitamin D???  My plan for dealing with this problem is to do nothing different and escalate the whining and complaining.  

Neighbors

Kira has a checkered history with bees and wasps.  The other day she noticed some wasps were starting a new hive in the peak of the roof of the garage.  She got the hose and power-washed it until it came off.  It was rather annoying because for about an hour after she did it the area around the garage and back door were swarming with angry wasps.  She took a chunk of the hive and put it on the deck railing right next to the door we mainly use so she could look at it.

The wasps came back to it and now we have a wasps nest right at hand-level in the doorway.  Mitch said, "They are very calm.  I touched one today."  I said, "On purpose?!"  Yes, he couldn't help himself.  He said it didn't even move.  It just sat there and accepted a friendly petting from Mitch.  He's like Dr. Doolittle but he won't even let me get a cat because he says, "It will literally kill me."  Wa wa.

**********************

A dog has adopted us.  Her name is Tilly and she comes over every morning when her owners let her out.

She hangs out on our deck all day and charms everyone except my dog, whom she bullies.  We live out in the country and when I go for walks I sometimes get snarled at by big dogs running loose.  None of them seem to be dangerous, but they are certainly scary sometimes.  The other day Tilly went on our walk with us and when the big mean dogs charged up to us barking their heads off, Tilly's teeny hackles went up and those big dogs stopped short and went back home and left us alone.

She has short-man syndrome but unlike most short men, it actually works for her.  She's our muscle.  And she's so cute because her little front legs are kind of bowed.

Kira washed her today because although she is adorable, she STINKS.  She rolls in everything gross.  One day she came over and she was green.  I don't know why.  She must have rolled in cut grass or something, but she didn't smell good like cut grass.  She usually smells like a poop-covered old corpse.

My New Friend

I got a Venus Fly Trap yesterday.  I've never actually seen one in real life and I've always wanted one of my own to feed hamburger to, and finally yesterday my childhood dream came true when I saw one at the grocery store.  It was in a plastic container which I assumed was for my own safety.  I wanted to replant it into a pretty glass jar I have but I was afraid it would bite me so it was kind of a messy process.  When I told Mitch that I had trouble replanting it because I didn't want to touch it he said, "Did you think it would... bite you???"  I just looked at him because yes, that is obviously what I thought.  Who wouldn't?  They BITE.  That's their thing.  Then he said, "You know it's a plant, right?"  Yeah, I know it's a plant.  A biting plant.  And I don't want to get bitten.  Jeez, what's so hard to understand?

After I replanted it and got it all situated, I turned on the outside light and waited for moths.  It always seems like moths immediately appear around a lightbulb, but when you're waiting for them, it takes a while.  I lost patience and went in the house and looked for a fly.  I found one, slapped it just hard enough to stun it and then picked it up with a tweezer and tried to feed it to my plant.  Apparently my plant wasn't hungry because when I put the stunned fly in it's jaws, it didn't snap shut like I was expecting (hoping).  It just sat there and then the fly came back to his senses and flew away.  Your loss, Flytrap!  The directions that came with it say specifically, "Do not feed your flytrap meat!" which I assume is because if I feed it meat it will grow like it's on steroids and be aggressive and dangerous.  When it gets used to its new home and gets hungry I'm going to feed it some raw hamburger.  I can't wait.  I want this plant to grow to frightening proportions and then I'll get a sign to put next to my door that says, "Beware of the plant"

my dream

my reality... (for now.)

Maria Bamford

For Book Club tonight, the ladies and I went to see comedian Maria Bamford do a show at St. Scholastica.  It was great.  She is the one who does the Target ads at Christmas time.

She's really strong.

I have been a fan of hers since my aunt sent me a home-made cassette tape out of the blue and told me to listen to it.  It was one of Maria's albums and I loved it so much that I wrote her (Maria) an email and told her that I thought she was so funny that from now on I would buy her albums myself and not rely on my relatives for bootlegs.  She wrote back and said she was glad I liked it.  Nice!  So I have bought her albums since then and I have kept up with what she has been doing.  She had a web show for a while that I loved.  I'm not a huge fan of stand up comedians but for some reason I really love Maria.  She does a bit about "Christy the Christian Teen" that just about kills me, and she also does impressions of her family members that are hilarious.  One of my favorite bits she does is about leaving her mom voicemail messages from the baby Jesus.

Tonight Maria did some material about mental illness that I thought was great.  She said people still don't think of mental illness as a "real" ailment because you never hear someone say they should treat their nearsightedness or cancer with an "attitude adjustment."  I loved that.

After the show we hung around and got to chat with Maria for a few minutes because my friend Dana went to high school with her.  Dana took a picture of the two of us.

But by far the most bizarre thing that happened all night was that I was sitting in the front row of the second section and a lady in an enormous motorized barcalounger came rolling up and everyone in the row had to scooch their chairs down so she could back into her spot right next to me.  The lady was on oxygen so she had a big tank and she also had bags and bags of stuff hanging all over within arms reach.  She took out a big bottle of water and a cup and had a little drink at one point. But that's not the bizarre part.  She also had a  wiener dog on her lap who was wearing a silver necklace and a pink, gingham, halter dress. I couldn't stop looking at that stupid dog.  And the dog couldn't stop looking at me.  It was unnerving.  Other people were looking at the dog too and I think the lady was getting self conscious about it because she put a pink vest on it that said, "My name is Rosie and I'm a service animal.  Please don't pet me."  I couldn't really pinpoint what service Rosie was providing, unless having a dog indefatigably lick your nasal cannulas is a service.  If it is, Rosie was doing a great job.

Kira's Summer Project

Kira came running into the house this evening and said, "GET THE CAR! I KNOW WHERE SOME TURTLE EGGS ARE!" and she made me drive down to the river and dig up a snapping turtle nest with her on the roadside.  This has been her dream for years.  Every year we watch big snappers come out of the river and dig up the shoulder of the road and lay eggs.  Then, by the next day the raccoons have gotten every single nest.

When she was about nine, she found some eggs and put them in her pocket and ran home to bury them.  Surprise surprise, they never hatched after the half a mile jog in her hot, dirty pocket.  I think Kira must have gotten this nest on the same day that it was laid.

We took about half a dozen eggs and then re-covered the rest. Right now they are in a bucket full of road sand, on the top of her bookshelf.  If they hatch, it will be in three months.  Then I'll have a house full of snapping turtles.  My dream.

Snuggly!

Yard Sale

School got out last week and we already had a busy summer weekend.  We went up to Intl Falls to help my parents and sister with their big garage sale.  I put some stuff in too.

Mostly old purses and all the chicken decorations everyone and their brother gave me several years ago when I got three live chickens.  Seriously, nobody gave a second thought about what to get me for my birthday that year, if it had a chicken on it, the general consensus was that I wanted it.  I got a chicken platter, a chicken rug, chicken plates, chicken candy dishes, a metal and wood decorative chicken, a chicken key holder, a big glass chicken full of olive oil and vegetables, a chicken basket, a chicken bank, a chicken tape dispenser, a gigantic cement chicken that weighs more than a 100 pounds etc etc etc.  I brought some of the better looking chickens to sell, thinking nobody would want a bunch of chicken stuff and it would end up in the dump.  The very first lady at the sale, who arrived an hour and 15 minutes before it officially opened, bought ALL the chicken stuff and would have brought more if I had only brought it all.  DARNIT!  I should have brought it all.

I finally acquired the giant fish platter that my sisters and I have been coveting since my mom got it about fifteen years ago.  I thought I was going to have to wait until they were dead and then fight my sisters for it, but my mom decided she doesn't want it anymore so it was going to go in the sale.  First my sister Beth was going to snag it and give it to my sister Amy for her birthday (tacky), but too bad for Beth, she was at work, so I put it in my car. HA HA! Now I have the big fish platter, my sisters do not have it, and my parents are still alive.  Win win win.

I tried to sell Amy's dog again, but nobody wanted her.

A few things...

I don't really have much to blog about lately.  Nothing to fill a whole post but I do have a couple funny stories:

I subbed for 8th grade band on Friday and because I don't know their music and what they've been up to, I asked one of the students to direct in my place.  This kid was so funny.  They had recently gotten music for the high school song and they were trying to learn it.  It was horrible.  They were all trying SO HARD to play it but no matter how hard they tried, it just sounded like they were tuning up.  Chris, the student-director stopped them and very dryly said, "I think it's important that we play more of the notes right."  Oh how I laughed.

The other little tidbit I have for you is that Maisy, my wonderful dog who communicates to my by whining only because she can't form words with her dog lips and doesn't have a voice box, whined the entire first verse of Camptown Races, leaving me with the "Do da, do da," part.  Wow.  Best duet ever.  

N is for Kira got a New fish (N is for the "New" of "New fish")

Kira has 103 dollars in cash, about 80 dollars on her Amazon account and 35 dollars on her iTunes account.  How does a twelve year old have so much money?  I'll tell you how.  She never buys anything EVER.  She occasionally pays Sam a couple of bucks to do one of her chores, but other than that, she doesn't part with any of it.  Until today.  After a lot of thought, she decided to get another pet fish.  She has had a beta fish for almost a year now and she takes care of it pretty well.  He always has food, his tank is clean, and she's even trained him to follow her finger when she runs it along the tank.  Seriously, he does it every time.  So we went to Petco.  Kira is so weird.  On the way we were talking about all our pets.  Here's a snippet of a conversation between Sam and her on the way to the store:

Kira:  I think we should get the bird a vest.
Sam:  She would HATE that!
Kira:  I know.

Anyway, we got to the store and she painstakingly pored over every single beta they have.  It took her about an hour to decide and she finally picked one.  Finally.  After that we decided to go to McDonalds for a quick lunch.  She didn't want to leave the fish alone in the car so she brought him in.  I asked her what she wanted for lunch and, while looking at her new pet she said, "I'll have a fish fillet."  Creepy.

On the way home from our errands she asked to stop at the grocery store so she could get some pure water for the fish tank.  She got a gallon.  When we were back in the car Sam asked her, "What tank are you going to put them in?" and without skipping a beat or cracking a smile she said, "I'm just going to put them both in this jug."  That made Sam and I laugh and she said, "What?  You don't like fish jugs?" which made Sam laugh even harder,  picturing a fish with boobs, but Kira didn't get it.

This might be the strangest picture I've ever seen.

Come to think of it, I don't know if Sam got it either, but he was laughing pretty hard.  Kira cleaned out her beta tank, put in the room divider and put in both fish, one per compartment.

That's her old fish, Knuckles, on the left.  The new fish, temporarily named Fish is on the right.  

Shorts

Kira made herself a pair of cutoff jean shorts today.  Now she's obsessed with them.  She only stopped talking about them long enough to annoy me.

She has been especially obnoxious today because she was away for the weekend and she apparently has an annoyance quota to meet.  Her brand of obnoxiousness includes sitting as close to me as humanly possible without actually being on top of me, and whispering, "Mom, guess what?  Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom.... guess what?  Mom, MOM, guess what?" and when I relent and wearily say, "....what" she puts her hand up to her mouth conspiratorially and says, "...Home show," in the thickest Minnesota accent you can imagine.  

Then she waits five minutes and does it again, but this time says, "...Boat show."  And then again and says, "...Dog show."  And so on and so on.  I couldn't make her stop.  I finally had to make her go to bed.  She got up to leave, and as she passed the bird's cage she said, "Hey Dad, you should make the bird some shorts," and then she went upstairs without another word.  

Mitch and I stared at each other and simultaneously burst out laughing/crying, and I don't know if we were laughing at the image of our bird wearing little denim cutoffs, or because we were worn so raw by her particular brand of torture.  It's like she is putting us through intense training for her upcoming teen years.  

I Googled "Bird wearing shorts," and I got a bunch of pictures like this:

Which made me say, "huh? I don't get it," and then I realized that this is LARRY Bird and he is wearing shorts.  Oh Google, you make me laugh.  I couldn't find any pictures of birds wearing shorts so I had to make one:

Photobomb

Mitch, sometimes a girl just wants a picture of her bird.

Sting

I suppose I should write something since this is my blog and people check it and they are probably sick of seeing  the picture of  my grandma's pills.  FYI, I spilled coffee on them so I never got the opportunity to take any. :(

The truth is, I don't feel like writing anything because nothing funny has been happening. My dog has a disgusting skin condition that requires several baths a week which neither one of us is very happy about.  And of course, I'm grieeeeeeevvvvviiinnnggggggggggg.  There's nothing funny about that.  But I have been thinking about how many incredible females (human and canine) I have in my life and I'm pretty lucky (except when they die or get a mangey hide, of course.)  My family is heavy on the females.  Kind of like a bee hive.  Speaking of bee hives, or rather, hornet nests; here is a picture of one in our yard that Kira can't leave alone:

Yes, those are arrows poking out and I'm pretty sure the bees didn't do that.  And to answer your next question, I have no idea how many times Kira has been stung.  She admits to nothing.  She's had a long and contentious relationship with striped, stinging insects her entire life from the time she was two years old and tried to pet a big, fat, fuzzy bumble bee and got her first sting.  Over the summer she was helping my sister paint her cabin.  She was up on a ladder painting around a window and she called out to Amy, "There's a bee's nest between some boards here!"  Amy said, "How do you know?" and she said, "Because bees are stinging me!"  It's a good thing she's not allergic to bee venom.

The Fair

Hi!  Sorry I've been away, but I was out ridin' my bike.  Not the whole time of course.  I went to a county fair for a while and saw two of my favorite things:  The 4H barn and baby animals.  I love the 4H barn because kids can enter ANYTHING and compete with someone else for it, and if it's obscure enough that nobody else entered anything, you win!  There's no, "Oh, nobody else entered anything like that so there's no competition, sorry kid!"  If some kid wants to enter his noodle version of the Millennium Falcon; done.  It's on display in the 4H barn.  The later in the summer the fair is, the better the 4H barn.  Boredom makes for some crazy projects.  I've tried to get Kira to enter some of her art into a fair but they don't have a category called, "half-assed stuff you made in two minutes from garbage you found on the counter."

like this

or this

or especially this

I also love the animal barns at fairs.  There weren't a lot of chickens at this one, but I saw more than my fair share of goats.  There is a new breed of goat on the scene (new to me, anyway) called Lamanche goats and they have no big floppy ears.  It looks like someone ripped their ears off and they look ugly and pathetic until you realize that they are supposed to look like that. And then they just look ugly.

Oh don't bother with the fancy pose.  You don't look nice.

We also saw some baby pygmy goats, better known (to me) as "house goats."

Look what Mitch won't let me get.

Mitch still says no to inviting one into our family and loving it like a child.  I've tried to explain to him how I need to hear the clippity clop of little hooves on the kitchen floor but he isn't fazed.  There is nothing I would love more than taking a bike ride with my mini-goat in the basket.  I hear they can be litter trained, and everyone knows that all goats eat are cans so how could I go wrong?  Could there be a better pet???

Vertigo and Tim the Snake

Have you ever had vertigo?  I'm having it again.  I woke up, took a shower, said to myself,  "Huh, I feel a little dizzy," and then threw up for about ten minutes which seemed like three hours.  Another example of intelligent design being such a STUPID theory is vertigo.  I'm not sick, I've got gunk in my dainty inner ear passages which inhibits the tiny cilia from flowing around like little feathers and telling my brain where it is in space.  My eyes see that I'm walking around, or bending over, or drying my hair, but the cilia are telling my brain, "Nope.  Sorry.  Eyes must be wrong.  We're still lying down."  And the brain's reaction to the conflicting messages is "THROW UP IMMEDIATELY AND DON'T STOP AT ALL." So that is why I was out on my deck in a towel dry heaving this morning, okay neighbors?  I managed to get a scopolamine patch on and took some Sudafed and then I laid on the couch and didn't move my head a millimeter for two hours.  The patch kicked in.  I looked up scopolamine on the internet tonight and it's pretty serious stuff.  It used to be used for mothers in labor to put them into a "twilight sleep" that didn't eliminate any pain, but worked to cause amnesia effects so the mom wouldn't remember the pain.  So I might never remember writing this.  It's also used as a depressant.  If you know me you know I don't need any depressants.  I could sleep 15 hours a day without any help at all.  It doesn't really help the dizziness, but it totally eliminates the nausea which, if you hate throwing up like I do (and who doesn't?!) is a miracle.  I have to go to bed now, but I'm afraid I will wake up in the same condition tomorrow, so I'm avoiding it.

Also, Sam found a snake in the yard.  It's a tiny Red-Bellied snake and Sam named it Tim.  I love him.  I'm going to decorate his terrarium tomorrow.

Tim

Mid-parenting Crisis

My kids are making a big jump this summer.  Kira is no longer an elementary school student, she's now a big middle-schooler, and Sam will be going to HIGH SCHOOL.  I just can't wrap my head around this because it seems like time is going too fast.  I'm having a hard time with this.  They don't NEED me anymore.  If I left for a day or even a week and left them alone, they would most likely be fine.  I was stressed when they were little at the thought that if I took my eyes off them they would do something stupid and get hurt, and now I'm stressed that they don't need me to watch every move they make.  What's my role here?  Crisis.

The other night I went to bed and looked around at some of the pictures of them when they were little.  Oh man, they were so cute!

They are still cute but now they have more chin hair than me (Sam) and can share shoes with me (Kira).  Where are my little kids?  I feel like someone took them and it makes me sad.

I was thinking about this yesterday as I was petting my dog and I thought to myself:  If I'm this sad now, what will I be like with an empty nest?  And then I looked down at my wonderful dog and the thought occurred to me that right around the time the kids leave the house, the dog will be reaching the end of her natural life.

An empty nest and a dead best friend.  And that's what will happen in a best-case scenario.  Life sucks sometimes.

Our Weekend In Pictures

Mitch did some landscaping.  There was grunting involved, and possibly a hernia.  I should have taken this picture with a person in it.  It's bigger than you think.  If I wrapped my arms around this trunk they wouldn't even come close to touching.

I watched a squirrel gorge himself on seeds from my squirrel-proof feeder.

Kira tried to catch the squirrel with this grabber and came closer than you think she could.  Now it's sitting by the front door, ready for the next time she wants to try.

My bird annoyed the crap out of me by flying all over the place like a total shithead so I clipped her wings and gave her a shower which I thought would bring her down a peg or two but it didn't.  I brought her outside, (BECAUSE I DIDN'T THINK SHE COULD FLY, THAT'S WHY!) and she flew away.  I think she was just as surprised as I was.  She flew into the tippy top of this tree:

and I couldn't find her for hours and hours, but I could hear her squawking so I told Kira I'd take her out for ice cream if she could get the stupid bird down.  There was a lot of shaking of branches, and eventually she came down.  Now the bird is back, safe and sound.  I wonder what she thought of being outside, so high up in a tree?  I really wonder.  I think she liked it and now harassing Mitch by stuffing her head up his nose is not going to be enough for her.  (she really likes Mitch)

I also got two bags of these because I had a coupon for buy one get one free.  Did you know that if you eat the better part of a bag of pita chips you might get diarrhea?  I didn't either.

Watch out, Bird!

Kira:  Dad, you know how people get shivers down their spine?  Do you think that ever happens to birds?

Mitch:  I don't know.

Kira:  Can we check?