They do not chew my wires

I just watched a grey squirrel climb up onto the tire of my Kia. So cute!

Which reminds me to mention that on the way home many nights a particular reddish-grey squirrel crosses the road about 50 feet in front of me. I'm pretty sure he's welcoming me home. :)

statuesque

(click to see full photo)

I lifted up the blinds to the kitchen window for Ripley and Red Squirrel was just standing at full attention in the bird bath. Thankfully he stayed long enough for me to find my camera and get a shot of him. And then Grey Squirrel came over and Red Squirrel took off. Oh well.

Yes, I did just mow that grass on Monday. On a very low setting. But Hay fertilized and it has rained so the grass is out of control again. The long part of our lawn is nice and short, I just mowed that last night! :)

Mission critical

I have a very important mission today. Let's start at the start. No worries, it's a quick story.

Five years ago I arrived to my current job and was taken under the wing of my very good friend since I was 15 years old. She brought me to get my ID card picture taken. It was an awful photo, one of my "squirrel caught in the headlights" photos, with me wearing this horizontal striped number.

Today, three days shy of exactly five years from that fateful day, her husband (Break Boy) and I are going to get our ID card pictures retaken so that we can be reissued new ID cards without that pesky SSN encoded in the barcode strip on the back. Break Boy asked me to go with him yesterday evening when we were talking on the phone about other pressing work matters. I am Break Boy's favorite eye candy, hence the special invitation. :)

See? Short story. Fascinating, wasn't it? I enjoy getting my ID card picture taken about as much as I enjoy having my eyes gouged out, but it is a necessary evil.

Big girls don't do cry

My little girl is growing up. I do believe Georgie has her first UTI:

1. Frequent alert crying way more than usual,
2. straining to urinate,
3. obvious discomfort when urinating,
4. frequent urination without passing much urine (between 9:30am and 10:30am we visited the litter box three four five times),
5. licking her "business" after each trip to the litter box.

:( Phooey. I shall be working from home tomorrow so that I can call the vet and say, "please dope up my kid so she's not sad anymore." The one amusing part about all of this is that this morning I instructed Georgie to tell me EVERY time she goes downstairs to use the box and she has kept her end of the bargain so well that I've moved a litter box up here and shut the basement door. She understands my English.

In other kitty news:

Flying Ripley

Laziest treat-eating Allie evah

One more thing, no Sunday Garden Party this week because nothing new is blooming outside. How about a squirrel instead?



Rest of the absolutely adorable chippy-squirrel images are at flickr. Sorry they're blurry. A combo of taking the photo through the kitchen window and only a 3x zoom will do that...

Spring, please?

I am ill again today so I stayed home to recover. At about 4:00pm I was finally feeling well enough to walk myself up the stairs to take a shower. Before I actually got into the shower I looked out the window and saw that the snowstorm that had stopped for a while earlier today had started back up again. We now have several inches of fresh snow to go on top of the 2+ feet we received a few weeks back. It's pretty, but I want it to go away. Before January it was so warm here that my spring bulbs were starting to burst out of the ground. Now the little red squirrel who visits our feeders is having to dig tunnels underneath the snow so that he can get back and forth between the two sets of feeders and the pine tree. I think everyone's done with winter. Can we please have some warm weather? Without precipitation? Or other freaky weather elements? Please?

Ordinarily

Things that make this day slightly out of the ordinary:

When I looked out the window of the bathroom with Ripley I saw one single snowflake. When I got out of the shower and looked out the window with Ripley there was a proverbial blizzard. When I came downstairs I heard this horrible buzzing noise. Turns out my pager was going off (on vibrate mode) and the cats got annoyed with it so knocked my purse over to get it out of the purse. When we were driving around the bend right before the railroad tracks the crazy dog who chases cars was staring us down. Today must have been (not?) our day because he chose not to run in front of our car or chase it. When I was walking past a tree between where Hay drops me off and my office building a squirrel lost his shit and started angry-chittering at me. I stopped walking and looked up in anticipation of a potential attack. When nothing more than his chittering happened I said, “cool down, little guy, I'll move!” then stepped two feet to the right and walked away while he continued to chitter at me. When I got to my office the heat was not on. It is still not on. My feet are freezing, my hands are cold, and my brain is murky.

That's what I've got. What has happened to you today to make it not ordinary?

Chris Daughtry: My American Idol by Poppy Milicent Cede

Chris is my favorite cuz he put out this album and lotsa people boughted it and I love him.


Someday I wanna enjoy his new box set*, but Mommy says that's for when I'm old enough to ride the big girl rides.


Goodbye! *wave*


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*Yes, that's totally ripped from Barenaked Ladies, who I also love. But, I also love squirrels and pigeons, so I dunno if you wanna trust my preferences.

Meme-alicious

So, this friend of Avi's? She posted a meme. And.......well, it's not mandatory that I do it, but it looks like so much fun, so I really need to do it.

Word association meme:

1. Squirrel : bite
2. Cow’s Tongue : nasty
3. Frog’s Legs : French
4. Nutria Rat : huh?
5. Hog’s Head Cheese : (it sounded) gross(, but I just read the recipe, so:) yum!


So, now I want you to EITHER answer Jolie's above OR/(and) do my lame one below. :D Thanks. :) (Let me know which one you're doing, because I'm easily confused.)

1. Capitalism :
2. Socialism :
3. Patriotism :
4. Nationalism :
5. Prism :

Tragedy loves company loves goofing off

It's really hard on me when I watch a reality-type show and am moved by it in whichever direction it cares to move me, then during the credits I see that one of the people in the show has died. The first time this happened was when I was watching the Women's Entertainment (We) show Single in New York. Do you know where I'm going with this? Probably. It was the beginning of 2002, or thereabouts, and I had just finished watching a marathon of the 2001 New York episodes. In the very last episode one of the ladies was so excited that she had finally found her true love in a big financial hot shot who worked at the WTC. Her parting comments were that they had planned to marry soon and start their lives together. Her fiance died on 9/11 when the WTC tower he was in (either North or South, I don't rightly remember which, but that's not the point) collapsed. I can't tell you how gutted I was when I read that on the screen. I started bawling. Once I stopped crying, or maybe in between sobs, I started craving information about him and his fiancee. I found all types of In Memoriam sites at the time, even a bit of an update from his fiancee.

Of course, the mind and the Internets are both fickle, so I now have no recollection of his name or nickname, and neither does Google or even We, who produces and airs the show. This makes me realize that peeking into people's lives for entertainment value is very short lived. I have been super busy at work for several weeks now, because this is our busy time, then at home because this is planting time. I have therefore had almost no time to keep up with the celeblogs. Day 1 I craved them like a wonderful cigarette or glass of 19-year-old Scotch, but now it's day I-don't-even-know-what and I check one or two sites maybe twice a day, if at all. I come away from them thinking, “why am I bothering?” I know those people are all important to someone, but it doesn't have to be me. Woah. You mean, the world will continue to revolve if I don't check 12 times an hour?! Really?! Are you sure? ... (Stef, help me out, am I sure? I heard a rumor that the world revolves elsewhere. ;)

I know I'm cured of my addiction for now. After my ortho adjustment this afternoon (I've moved from vertical Impalas to Bears with a box pattern! W00T!), instead of rushing home to curl up and catch up with my favorite celebrity gossip sites I went to Agway to purchase potato tubers, onion sets, seeds for the veggie gardens, and dried corn cobs for the squirrels. Once home I did laundry, dishes, cat treats, mail sorting, dinner, and tweaking of the eVite guest list for our porch party. What the hell have I become? Old lady! No. No, no no. Responsible! Yes. Okay. But not that responsible, because I really should be in bed right now but I'm goofing around on my blog. 8^.D

My inner squirrel

Let it be known that from this day henceforth I shall be addressed as Private McNutty.

Wait. That isn't very regal. Oh well. That's my squirrel name, and don't you forget it! Thank you to President Furrycheeks* for helping me to realize my full potential.


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*the squirrel formerly known as P'nut

No squirrel poems

Not surprising, and embarrasingly so, all of my poems from that college poetry class were about sex with my roommate at the time except a boring one about my best guy friend in college and this one, which is about a rabbit (not a squirrel, sorry to disappoint everyone including me):

Villanelle du lapin

She walks the floor, her cautious eyes aware
of me. She turns her head and sees the way
my hand is dancing on the hallway stair.

She sits and wonders, thinking “do I dare?”
She runs to me and bats my hand in play;
she walks the floor, her cautious eyes aware.

My hand continues dancing as the hare
begins to strike at me again, But hey,
my hand is dancing on the hallway stair

and if I didn't want to pay the fare
I shouldn't tease the bunny on this day.
She walks the floor, her cautious eyes aware.

I start to move my hand away from where
it rests but Bunny wants my hand to stay!
My hand is dancing on the hallway stair.

And so I lay my hand with utmost care
upon the bunny's cozy nest of hay.
She walks the floor, her cautious eyes aware:
my hand is dancing on the hallway stair.

I have no recollection of what this poetry style is really called, but it should be called dog-freakin'-awful-yo poetry. Just terrible.

If you want some good poetry you should encourage Bdogg to post hers! You can tell from her pout* that she has a true gift, even though she plays like she's bad at it. Doesn't her mouth in this photo kinda remind you of TJ? Yah, I knew you thought so, too!

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*Please click that link so you'll realize why she's making that face. It has to do with patience, and she's adorable. :)

pas de bohème poème

Hi, happy Friday! I hope...

I thought all night about going down into the basement to retrieve the red binder. I was even down there to scoop poopies and watch Georgie pee! But, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I'll dig it out this weekend. It's sitting on top of a box, so there's actually no digging involved. Sad. That's how pathetic the poetry is. There's one about a squirrel, though! And, in that class I had to also write stories, so I might publish my pigeon story, the catalyst for which was a real event in my life. I admit it - I love squirrels, pigeons, seagulls, mice, rats (okay, not love but at least like), and anything else commonly thought of as a varmint animal. But, don't ask me about bugs. I can't. No. Not the bugs. Go away. No. Shoo!

Squirrelly

That's Sugar Bush Squirrel, the most photographed squirrel in the world.

I love squirrels so much I just can't stand it. (No, I am not joking. Why would I kid about such matters?!) So, obviously, I love Sugar. :) He loves to dress up (yah, sure) and has over 1000 outfits! I dunno how I feel about dressing up animals in theory, but I know it's a lot of fun in practice.

Cred to Presurfer.

P'nut, look!

Cityrag has squirrel photos today:



Here's the rest of the post.

Who doesn't love squirrels?! :)

This is why I don't eat lamb...

You Are A: Lamb!

Peaceful and gentle, lambs have been used in religious imagery for millennia. Lambs are baby sheep, an animal tended by shephards since the dawn of history. As a lamb, you tend to stay together in a flock and graze on grassy land. Lambs don't mind being led and tend not to go off on their own.

You were almost a: Pony or a Duckling
You are least like a: Squirrel or a ChipmunkWhat Cute Animal Are You?

Thanks to Jules!

I am so sad to find out I am least like a squirrel or chipmunk. Sorry, P'nut! :(

Today's mail

The Republic of Tea seems to think I need to infuse more tea into my life, so they sent me one bag of SIP FOR THE CURE Pink Grapefruit Round Green Tea Bag.



Sorry, RoT, but green tea makes me feel like I'm about to drop dead on the spot from racing heart palpitations. Thanks for thinking of me, though. I know who I'll give the tea bag to! - my co-worker whose daughter shares my passion for squirrels. (They are not rats with furry tails, shame on you!)

Probably the best prison on Earth

This morning my husband shook me awake to tell me there was a squirrel caught in the bird feeder. I slowly woke up, got dressed for the pouring rain, grabbed the camera (of course!), and went out to save the squirrel. But, first! A picture:



(Please ignore the bird poo. :)

The second picture I took (which isn't much different than this one) startled the squirrel enough so that he found the way out which happened to have been the way he came in. So, the next time you find an animal in the wild who is stuck somewhere, try taking a picture with the flash on. :)

Dive bomber

This "little" guy did not want me anywhere near him so he kept flying straight at me then returning to the post. I was just trying to feed the birds and squirrels because they were out of food. I spent 15 minutes tiptoeing around this dragonfly before I told him, "look, I need to put this food out!" and chased him off when he came at me twice more. Oh well. I tried to get along, but he was not havin' it... Reminds me of some people I know. :)

Can't take myself anywhere

While waiting for the groomer to call me on my cell I went galavanting around the "seedy" part of town (I grew up there) where there is a dollar store, a hardware store, and a sports store.

In the dollar store I managed to knock over 4 objects without breaking them, then when I went up to the counter I broke an object I was paying for so had to pay for that one and for another to replace said broken object. One of my purchases included 6 packets of various vegetable and herb* seeds. (*We're growing an herb garden. [Not that kind of herb garden.]) $14 of j-unk when all was said and done.

Then, off to the hardware store where I stared at the lawn and garden gadgets, the bird and squirrel feeders, then a shining light blazened into my eyes as I was about to exit sans purchase: 40% off all flower, vegetable, and fruit seeds. I bought me $17 worth o' seed-on-sale. I am now the proud owner of the following seed packages: watermelon, cucumber, lettuce, carrots, green beans, peppers, squash, hyacinth bean, morning glory, cosmos, echinacea, velvet queen sunflower, mountain beauty mixed color sunflower, johnny jump-ups (i know, they're weeds too, but purty!), sweet basil, oregano (not *that kind* of oregano), broccoli, and sweet corn.

At the sports store they talked me into buying a dress. I know what you're thinking -- "who buys a dress at a sports store?" Well, that would be me. Got it at 50% off! A lovely little black cocktail dress. Behind the counter they made mention of how many people had tried it on before me, so I'll be dry cleaning it before wearing it. Dress was "$30 even". (Big spender...) I don't have an event on the horizon to wear said dress. I don't even have shoes to go with it right now!



My point: I do feel guilty in small stores if I buy nothing whatsoever. Why is that? I spent $61, plus bought a Coke at McDonald's, plus paid the groomer's fee + tip. I spent waaaay too much money today on stuff I did not in any way whatsoever need. Eh?

accomplishments

1. talk to, laugh with, and tickle hubby in bed - check!
2. grab breakfast from dunkin' donuts - check!
3. move dying lilac from front yard to back yard - check!
4. plant new lilac in front yard - check!
5. put out seed and suet for the birds, squirrels, and other critters - check!
6. get the mail - check!
7. ask hubby to feed the kitties - check!
8. take digital camera movies of the cats being cute - check!
9. scoop the litter boxes - check!
10. read People magazine - check!
11. waste copious amounts of time surfing blogs and posting to my blog - check!
12. watch 6 recorded episodes of Richard Dawson on Family Feud - check!
13. eat lunch - check!
14. mow the lawn - check!
15. eat chocolate ice cream - check!
16. read about flowers and plants for a hummingbird garden - check!
17. do more blog surfing - check!
18. trick hubby into making us dinner - check!
19. give the girls their cluck-a-doodle treat - check!
20. eat the desserts I brought home for us yesterday - check!
21. clean up dinner dishes and set up dishwasher - check!
22. watch the life aquatic with steve zissou - check!
23. more surfing - check!
24. bed time - ... ... ... check?