The birds nest situation

A few weeks ago an old work friend of Kym's came over to visit and she brought us a hanging pot plant. Kym hung it out on the front porch. About 3 days later Kenslee and a neighbor were playing out front and this robin just kept bouncing around and flying up to the plant. I looked and saw the bird had built a perfectly formed nest in there already... with several eggs laid.

Kym, unwilling to let the flowers die, continued to water them even with the nest in there. When she would water them the mama bird flipped out. She'd fly back and forth between the trees in our yard to the roof, to the rain gutter, screaming at her the whole time. When the eggs hatched she got even more aggressive. Sometimes calling in backup. There'd be 3 or 4 birds doing the same thing. Becoming more and more brazen with swoops towards the nest as Kym was watering the flowers.

Using her 39th week of pregnancy as an excuse for her fear of the birds she had me water them yesterday. We use a big pitcher of water and I emptied about 90% of it into the pot with the mama bird doing her normal squawking/swooping. As the water drained from the pot I went to empty the last little bit into the pot and as I did so one of the baby birds freaked out, hopped up, and tried to take flight. It jumped, started heading straight for the ground flapped it wings, caught some air, flapped again, and flew right into Kym's car in the driveway. It laded safely and started hopping under her car. In the meantime mama bird got super pissed and called her backup. There were about 6 birds going crazy. 2 birds helping the baby bird and another 4 wreaking havoic. In a panic Kym, Kenslee and I ran in the house for cover.

Feeling extremely bad I went out the back door and walked around the house to survey the situation. When I got out front the baby bird was gone. There was still a little bit of chaos going on around the trees in the yard, but I saw no trace of the baby who tried to fly. I can only assume she was scooped up by a wild puma, or cougar, or bald eagle, or leopard, or lion.

I went back inside and looked out my window at the nest and the other baby bird was now sitting on the edge of the nest. She looked scared and alone and she looked like she was about to try to fly herself. I watched for a few minutes before I got bored. Again, I can only assume she was eaten by a wild Asain or African-based carnivore because this mornign there was nothing but an Empty Nest.

Breaking News

Since I've mentioned it before, I'll write this now... my Sister-in-law who has now been in the hospital for 8 weeks was supposed to have a c-section today, 4 weeks before her due date. She was told yesterday that they overbooked the c-sections today and she'd have to wait an extra day. It upset her so much to wait one more day that she went into labor and her water broke last night. The baby was born, 6lbs 12 oz. All are doing well.

Last Weekend

Last weekend we spent a night in the Pocono Mountains for a wedding. We stayed in this awesome house on Lake Wallenpaupack. (Site of the Booze Cruise Episode of The Office.) The house was this amazing million dollar house with a hot tub on the deck over looking the lake and they had a pool table, a shuffle board table, a bubble hockey machine, darts, and everything awesome. The wedding was kinda boring, my brother (who is approaching 10 months sober) and his girlfriend left early to go home and play scrabble. When I got home I joined in and dominated them with awesome spelling skillz.

As I said, the house was amazing and we took a grand total of one picture:

Can't Heidi Klum's husband be arrested for this kind of behavior?

Link

Green, Grass, Grace

I was just reading someone's blog who's name I won't mention unless she wants me to. But, someone commented that "The grass is always greener..." And it got me thinking.

The grass IS always greener. Seriously. My grass sucks. It's brown with bare spots all over. It's got tons of weeds and crab grass. Last night I took my daughter for a walk and when we got to the end of the block she lied down on my neighbor's grass and spread out like she was in bed. She won't even touch our grass. I hate my grass.

My wife on the other hand is the best in the neighborhood.

The worst named illness since chickenpox

So my daughter came home with a letter from her Daycare the other day that one of the children in her class came down with Hand Foot and Mouth Disease. When you first hear that, you immediately think of that disease where they had to shut down Europe and you had to throw away the hamburgers and the cows and sheep were just randomly exploding and whatnot. Right?

Well, it turns out that was Foot and Mouth disease. Not Hand Foot and Mouth disease. Duh! Hand Foot and Mouth Disease is kind of like a mild case of the flu where you get bumps on the aforementioned parts of your body that neither burn or itch. It goes away itself after a few days.

So, my question is could they really think of no other names for this illness other than basically the same name as that one that caused the Potato Famine back in 1999?


Oh, and she may or may not have it. It's kind of like when someone has a sore throat and then suddenly you feel like you might have a sore throat, or it may just be in your mind. That's exactly what hand foot and mouth disease is like.