The Birds

 I am getting the chimney rebuilt today (or recrowned) - something like that.  I'm not very knowledgeable about chimney-related things.  We had a nest of chimney swifts and I guess the noise drove my daughter and SIL crazy.  The fireplace is in the basement so they heard it and I did not.  Until my daughter broke her ankle and I was down there more to help her out and I finally heard them.  They are noisy! And, we had one come completely down the chimney and into the basement and had a heck of a time getting that thing outside. It finally fell into a hamper with a lid and SIL carried it outside.  

When the chimney guy came about a month ago he said he just had to wait a couple of weeks and the baby birds will have left the nest and he could fix it so they would not return to building a nest there.  As we were talking I mentioned that I was planning to get a new roof sooner (or later).  

He said I needed a new crown on my chimney if I were going to do that.  So I said "Well, just put the new crown on when you come back to put the lid on (or whatever he said he was going to do).  That is scheduled for noon today.  It had to be rescheduled due to rain a few weeks ago.  Now, it looks like rain is coming in at about 3 p.m. today.  I hope it holds off so this guy can get his work done.

I will be a basket case the entire time he is up there on the roof hoping he does not fall off.  At least this time both daughter and SIL are home with me.

By the way, Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" traumatized me when I was young.  I watched it on TV probably at eight years old or so and it was terrifying!  I am not afraid of birds, we even had a cockatiel for a few years and I love to watch the baby robins progress in the shrub outside my kitchen back door. 

But I could not catch that bird in the basement.  I had a small blanket I was using and the fluttering of its wings just unnerved me.  Years ago we found two small dead birds in our basement.  We figured they must have flown down the chimney and one of our cats did away with them.  My daughter was not letting her husband or I harm this bird to return it to the outdoors.  It was a Friday evening and she could not help because of her broken ankle.  She was quite critical of our lack of skills at catching said bird.

For some unknown reason they had removed the screen that I kept in front of the fire place. They put it back after that ordeal.

Flash

Photo courtesy of niece. I did not attend these back-yard fire works. I don't usually feel safe when "amateurs" are letting off fire works. I love my nephew and I hope he is always safe.

My sister-in-law is home from the hospital and doing well I am told. I will probably go visit her later today or tomorrow.Or, I may just wait and call instead. I like to give people time to rest and adjust. She did have all of her stomach removed and we are hoping that the cancer does not return somewhere else.

Very quiet around here. I did nothing yesterday. There is a big festival in town for the week-end, but I don't go any longer. I don't need that food that I love so dearly and I don't need the noise.

Weather has turned cool here in Ohio, so just keeping windows and doors open instead of running the air is enough.

A beautiful bird had decided to build her nest on the top of my front door porch light. It is one that sits on the side of the door. I did not realize it until I went out after dark the other evening to retrieve the mail and she went nuts when I went to go back into the door.

I had no idea what the hell was going on and I thought I was under attack. Hearing the flutter of the wings I realized it was a bird and I figured she must have built a nest on my light. I wasn't looking up, I was holding the mail over my head. I felt like Tippi Hedron! I believe I twisted my neck - it was hurting all the next day.

I go out the back door and around the house to sneak into my mailbox, now. It is on my front porch wall. I move slow and she and I just eyeball each other the entire time. No sudden movements!

Hair

LOL! My little grand nephew seems to be jealous of the birds with their full heads of hair. He is pointing. Or, maybe he is counting. Either way, I thought it made an adorable picture. Photo courtesy of his Mom (my niece by marriage).

Oh, just for the record. I spoke to a principal of an elementary school yesterday. I was helping her with the filter since the district's tech person had left. She was so sweet and so thankful for my help. It made me feel so much better after dealing with the teacher I spoke to last week. What is that saying about 'one bad apple...' eh?

I'm tellin' ya. It is quite obvious to me how different districts are. I can only hope that your children or grand children are in one of the good ones. There are some unhappy teachers out there because their administration just does not give a damn. And I don't want to put all the blame on the administration. I know it takes two and goes both ways and all of that. It is just a sad thing when the anger and the animosity starts and it just has to have an effect on the children's learning.

Yikes!

I think this photo was taken at the zoo gift shop in Pittsburgh back in '07. Not certain. Oh, that is my daughter in that snake's mouth. 

Speaking of teeth. We were, weren't we? I had a molar pulled Thursday. I have not had a tooth extraction since the late 70's when I had my wisdom teeth pulled out. In the chair. That's right sissies. No nitrous oxide for us back in those days. The dentist used a C-clamp and pliers. My mouth remained swollen as if I had a wad of chewing tobacco in there for a week.

I was a bit nervous with not knowing what to expect. Psshh! It was nothing! Two things bothered me. The first was the sound as they pulled it out. Talk about fingernails on a chalkboard. Grrr! And about three hours later was the intense itching as the Novocaine wore off. That did not last long and I barely needed Advil. I took it more as a precaution than as a pain reliever. I had no pain to speak of.

I am a tad bit worried about the sinus cavity that the tooth root was close to. The dentist told me not to blow my nose for two days. Okay. The dental instructions said not to swish for two days. Can I brush?! How can you brush without swishing a bit of water around up there?

Eh, I made it through. Other than that "weird" empty feeling - things are fine. It is healing quickly and I am hoping that this resolves a lot of (what I hope were related to this tooth) problems over the past years. That upper right region of my sinus/gums/ear has had it's share of misery.

The finger is healing. The tooth (or, rather gum) is healing. My body must be in some kind of "what the hell is happening to us" mode. It must be working overtime healing my wounds.  That is a lot of stuff going on in the body. I think I need to rest all week-end and take it easy and let my body heal. Movies are waiting. Also hovering  ominously close is :   Angry Birds - yes...dammit! I have become slightly addicted. I keep picking the Nook up and playing "ONE.MORE.LEVEL."!!!  OMG! There is a web site titled "one more level". Oh, God. Don't go there.

Super Sunday

This photo taken by my daughter with my new camera.

We went to see Super 8 last evening. It was loud and I forgot to take any ear plugs. It was much funnier than I expected it to be. The kids really made the show. This is not my usual genre of movies but I really enjoyed it. I related to the music and the hairstyles (takes place in 1979).

I did not catch sight of my nephew or his car. The scenes changed much too quickly. Maybe after watching it a few times and him pointing out to me where and when - but I was just too caught up in the movie to think about what was going on in the background. The train wreck was totally awesome.

Baby birds

Oh yeah. There is some mama bird out there that will be aiming for me all summer. I am certain I will get dive bombed. My daughter was yelling at me. It was her house and the bird had built a nest on her front porch so she was probably trying to keep peace with her little residents. My bad.

Have had company since Thursday and my headaches are running at full steam since yesterday. OTC medication not touching them. Looks like I'll have to get out the heavy artillery. Since I started typing the pain increased significantly. WTH? Is it the concentration? Looking at the type? What?!

Have a family cook-out today and the heat will not be my friend. I suppose I'll have to stay indoors in the A/C. Bleh!

Saturday Afternoon

Another batch of cranberry-nut bread. My first attempt to make it less crumbly was by adding some small sliced apples to the mix. When I sliced the bread all was perfect until the very last edge and then it crumbled again. Not bad. For some reason this batch seemed a bit more sour. I used cranberries from another grocery store. Maybe? Or could be I mis-judged on the sugar. I doubled the batch and I was distracted several times, so it is possible that I did not add enough sugar. (Sorry, blogspot - www.dictionary.com says that "mis-judged" IS spelled correctly).

My Great (Grand) niece came up to stay with me yesterday. This is the reason I was distracted in my measuring of ingredients in the bread. After watching a movie she crashed. (My nephew said I should refrain from the word "crash" for at least a year because of my deer incident - LOL!).

She was not the only one who napped the afternoon away. Here is my baby Slade (above). I have nick-named him Eeyore because of his common dejected demeanor.

This one (above) is my big baby Casper. Our first pet (after the bird).

And, this is Jasper (above). Curled up and dreaming of sugarplums and catnip I suppose.

On a side note, to make all of you out in blogdom feel better; I had a horrible problem with my computer Friday. It got hijacked or something. Well, maybe it wasn't that bad. I could not do anything! I got frustrated. I was able to fix it Saturday morning. You must have a ton of patience and calmly WAIT, WAIT for the system to respond and run your anti-malware programs. I recommend the following:

malwarebytes from www.malwarebytes.org

ad-aware from www.lavasoftusa.com (do not confuse this with the adware malware)

spybot search & destroy from http://www.safer-networking.org

I am sure there are other good programs, but the above three usually take care of my woes. I don't purchase any of the above. I use the free programs. I do pay for anti-virus software.

Here is the mailbox

Five baby birds nested inside

Here is a broader view of the bird's nest we found in the mailbox. I'd never seen anything like it. Do they plan it? Was it an accident? Does the Mommy bird nest here every year? We have one on the side of our house and it is full (sometimes twice) every year.

Well, the busy season is upon me. I have something every week-end between now and the fourth of July. I cancelled my annual 4th of July blast because I am giving a graduation party for my daughter in June. Still, I will have some company for the fourth, just not forty people.

My daughter wants something a little different for her graduation party. I'll have to think about it. An inflatable sumo wrestling setup.

Update on the co-worker. I overheard her calling the doctors for an increase in her medications.

You've got mail

Seen in a mailbox

Two sisters and I went to WV to begin planning a reunion this past week-end. I suppose if my sister didn't smoke we would never have seen the five baby birds nested inside a mailbox. The door was left open all the time (of course). The mommy bird did not show while we took pictures. I would have removed the door completely for fear that some ornery kid would come along and close it. This nest was outside of a flower shop. I suppose they check on it from time to time.

We laughed a lot while visiting relatives. Old memories and old sayings. We got the ball rolling on this first annual reunion on my father's side. My Mom was born in the same vicinity but she was (almost) an only child. Her half brother didn't come along until she was ten and she never met him until they were in their fifties.

The hardest part will be no electricity in the shelter house. The grills were in pretty bad shape but after talking to one cousin he knew who to talk to and will have new ones there by August.

There were 8 children in my father's family. One did not have any children. But, one had fourteen. I am thinking about 35 children from this original 8. No one remains of the original 8, but you can imagine the children and grandchildren. They are scattered all over. Some in New York, some in Maryland, some in Virginia and some in Ohio. It will be interesting to see how many show up. Our family will have a definite 20 show (maybe more). We know of 20 that confirmed while on our recent visit. Outside of that is any body's guess.

Terminology is different there. We chuckled at our one cousin. While calling relatives close by his call waiting kept beeping. He was trying to answer it. He was not successful. (I usually never am, either). He said "The kids say to press the tic-tac-toe button."

Sweet!

Sorry this picture is so out of focus. I think my hands were shaking from the anticipated sugar high. Mercy, they were good!

And we did give our bird away Friday evening. I instantly liked the lady that came to get her. I feel that Peru is in a good home and will get much more attention and love.

Movies

While looking for a picture of my bird, Peru to post, I came across a video and I thought to myself, 'Hey. You have not uploaded a video yet.' So, here we are. Very boring.

Saw Iron Man last night. Very good. I liked it. I have always liked RD Jr. Actually, I have only seen him in a couple of movies so there you have that for what it is worth. Home For the Holidays and maybe one more.

The movie is about a businessman who manufactures and sells weapons of mass destruction. When he is demonstrating his latest and greatest in the caves of a Mideastern country his party is ambushed and all are killed except for him. He is up close and personal with a rocket that is going to blow up and ironically he sees the name of his company on the weapon before it explodes. During his 3 month ordeal as a prisoner he changes form the self-centered and selfish brat of a rich playboy to a humanitarian. Realizing that his weapons are actually falling into the wrong hands he decides to change his ways and try to fix some of the damage that has been done.

My very favorite line in the movie is when his dedicated secretary (played by Gwyn P) brings the clothes of his latest one-night stand and tells her that Tony is at work and here are her clothes freshly dry-cleaned. In other words "Get out honey, your purpose here is over." The tart jibes that this secretary is still picking up Tony's dry cleaning. To which Gwyn's character retorts "I do whatever Tony needs me to do, and sometimes that includes taking out the trash." Ouch!

My daughter had read on-line a bit telling us to stay after the credits for a surprise. (Spoiler ahead) It was Tony Stark (RD's character) coming home and walking into a dimly lit room and seeing somebody in the shadow. That person spoke and when he came into the light you could see that it was Samuel Jackson. Looks like they are already planning a sequel.

Peru