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The more I look at the pictures of the little owl fellow that flew around in our garage, the more I think it’s a baby.  And not just because it’s small, either.  No, I have found pictures of breeds that are much smaller.  See below.

Pygmy Owl

No, I think it’s a baby just because it’s so ruffled looking.  It doesn’t have the smoothness the adult owls have in the pictures I am finding online.  But then again, it was in MY garage.  I get ruffled every time I go out there too and that obnoxious little dog barking like that…  I bet he was thinking, “If ONLY I were bigger and I could just eat that damned thing to shut it up!”  I don’t know for sure, but since I am having trouble finding a picture that looks like it, I think that it’s a youngster.

Now here’s my story about the last time I had to deal with an owl.  I mean before this.

I was 18 years old and my brother, Cam was 10.  Our dad was in hospital having some heart bypasses, so we were staying at home by ourselves while our mother was at the hospital with him.  We lived in a big ol’ two story house and he and I had never stayed by ourselves before.  (I mean, OF COURSE, right?)  I had been hearing a strange little scratching noise in the wall of my bedroom at night and had decided we must have mice and made a mental note to tell Mither about it as soon as everything calmed down and got back to a more normal routine.  The chimney to the living room fireplace shared my bedroom wall and it never occurred to me that there could be anything in there.  This went on for three nights.  Then, one evening, I was sitting on the couch in the living room reading and all of the sudden there was this gigantic WHOOSH of ashes that flew up in the fireplace.  I couldn’t see anything and then this huge white face with two enormous eyes turned around and looked at me and blinked.  It was a gigantic barn owl.  IT WAS HUGE, PEOPLE.  It just stood there in the fireplace and looked around and at me.  I just sat on the couch without moving like a scared little kitten.  I wasn’t really scared even, I just had no idea what to do.  My brother was asleep and besides that… he was 10.  I called Mom and told her and by this time I watched the owl hop up on top of the damper and sit there.  I stuck my head in the fireplace and could see two great big talons wrapped around the metal edge of it.  I counted myself lucky that I hadn’t received any owl shit in the face, wondered briefly if it really was slick, (My pop was always saying one thing or another was “slicker than owl shit”.), and pulled my head back out.  Mom had said she didn’t know what to do either and she’d be home the next day.  So we agreed that it needed water and food, as it had been there for at least three days, (that’s what I’d been hearing in the wall, actually the chimney).  So I got a little bowl of water and some lunch meat and put it in the fireplace.  I then closed the heavy metal chain link screen…and went to bed.

I have to say that except for the initial whooshing landing in the fireplace I was never really scared of it.  I felt very sorry for it and was worried it was going to die of dehydration, but I just never got the feeling it was threatening.

It never touched the food or water at all, that I could tell.  Perhaps it wanted mayo and wheat bread with pickles.  Perhaps it was a mustard kind of owl.  I don’t know why it turned up it’s…beak to my dinner selection, I only know it did.

So, that next night my dear, brave mither came home and we set about getting the owl out of the house.  It had jumped back down in the fireplace.  Mither was terrified out of her mind awed by it.   I opened the screen and we waited for it to decide to come out.  It was probably a little shy and wondered why we kept peeking around the corner at it.   Finally, it did and we ran in to try to shoo it…somewhere, and it flew straight into the sliding glass door.  No, we had not thought to open it first.  It was freakin cold outside and that’s my excuse.  Whatever.  Anyway, it smacked it’s beak pretty hard and was dazed and confused.  It was like it was competing with us… still think we won the dazed and confused contest…

The poor thing flew around the living room for a short bit and landed on things you wouldn’t think it would choose to land on and then flew through the breakfast area, kitchen, utility room and into the game room, completely avoiding the sliding glass door that stood open.  We followed.  Finally we had it somewhere we thought we could get it out easily.  There was a pair of French doors that one of us opened all the way.  I kept trying to shoo it toward the doors and it seemed oblivious.  It flew all over and finally when I was wondering if we were keeping it and could it please live in my brother’s room, it looked straight at the doors and I almost heard it say, “Ah ha!”  I saw the little light bulb go on over it’s head and it took off.  With both full size doors open it had to tilt diagonally to fit through the opening.  The doors were six feet across.  I don’t even know what the diagonal measurement was.  A lot.  Freakin’ huge-ass owl.

I have to point out that my dear mither was a squealing mess, cowering against whatever wall she could back up against and standing in doorways ready to flee, whilst making small squeaking noises.  Pretty much useless for herding owls.  Luckily, she has proven invaluable for a large multitude of other things… and we all love her dearly.

If you head on over to Psychicgeek, Witchypoo has written a very moving post about Ivy, a two year old little girl that is desperatly ill and is having a life saving treatment withheld from her.  It’s all a bunch of bureaucracy and her mother is trying to do everything possible to help her.  This is an online company that does petitions and I want you to go there and sign up.  Ivy needs all the help she can get.

9:45 Saturday evening.

Greetings, intertubes.  I am sitting here watching The Weather Channel and trying to out-predict the weather man.  This should not prove difficult, as he looks like he graduated from high school last year, or maybe the year before that.  God knows I have lived through many, many more hurricanes than he can remember.

It is going to Louisiana… poor bastards.

10:29 Sunday morning

It’s been a long time since I lived in Louisiana, but I swear I don’t remember them having presidents of parishes.  I couldn’t believe some guy on the news was referring to this guy as “Mr. President”.  Then there was a crawler across the bottom that said he was the president of the parish.  For those of you who don’t live in Louisiana, a parish is the same thing as a county.  Except, apparently, they have presidents.  Weird.

The stinking mold is back.  Except, really it doesn’t stink.  And it looks different.  Instead of a white powder it’s…fluffy.  No.  I have not been smoking anything or eating anything that lived down there with the mold.  There was no indication that we had any at all and I would have never known if I hadn’t just reached under there and wiped my hand to check for it.  John thinks that if we hadn’t found it maybe it would change into the powdery kind like we had before.  I don’t really know what to think.  AND I don’t know why it’s here.  STILL.

I have an awesome post waiting in my camera to be unleashed.  But, sadly, the camera card wasn’t in my camera when I took the awesome pictures and they are committed to internal memory so I have to have a cord to download to the pooter.  Guess what I can’t find?  I know.  Enough excuses already!  I will look for one on Tuesday when John is off and the sitter is here to take care of H.

12:35 pm Sunday  SIL just left.  She showed up and visited for about an hour with her mother and helped me change one diarrhea diaper.  I suppose she thinks she has contributed as much as necessary until next week.  She brought her 11 year old grandson with her and she just walked in where I was and said “I guess I’ll go.  He’s already ready!”  No shit?  An 11 year old boy isn’t having fun at my house with absolutely nothing to do except watch tv?  Shocking.  Wonder what she’ll do to break outa here in no time next week…

Would you believe me if I said that I’ve been cooking, baking, and cleaning non-stop for the past few days?  No?  Well, that makes you a smart little cookie, doesn’t it?  If I had a gun to my head and some yo-yo telling me he’d shoot if I didn’t account for my time, I’d be a dead, domestic failure…rather than just a domestic failure.  I guess I’m saying things could always be worse.

I did manage to get a few things done today.  Sweeping the kitchen, breakfast area and utility room and doing my version of mopping to all of those freshly swept areas.  This entails walking around with a spray bottle of one sort of cleaner or another and a handy wipe, bending over spots, squirting, wiping, and moving on to the next spot.  Hey, don’t laugh.  My floor is clean…er.  I put things away left and right that have been slowly piling up for ages and cleaned the kitchen, and did several loads of laundry.

Got H on the bedpan not once, but two times for a grand total of two poos.  This normally throws her into a tailspin.  As I have discussed here before an unscheduled poo, or U. P. is a force of nature to contend with in this house.  She was reciting some panicky sounding prayers the second time I put her on, but other than that she handled it well.

John worked a “close” today and will be home about 11:00 or midnight.  He is enjoying his new boss and things are going smoothly so far.

Yesterday I asked him if he had chased any shoplifters through the parking lot lately and he replied, “No, I’m too fat and old for that.”  To which I immediately responded, “Your not fat.”  He groaned at me.  Seriously though, he’s getting older everyday, but he has lost a lot of weight lately.  He says he’s getting down to his “fighting weight”.  heh, heh, heh.

Pop is going into the hospital next Tuesday to have a defibrillator implanted just under the skin in his chest.  It is a battery operated thing that has two little wires that will be attached to his heart and if it stops beating or falters it will shock it into rhythm.  I don’t know much more than that about it.  Mom will ask more questions, I am sure.  I am wondering how long the batteries last and what changing them entails.

I guess that is all I’ve got to report at the moment.  I haven’t been doing much of anything or feeling like doing anything.  Very blah.  I haven’t even been Plurking.  I have also been neglecting reading the blogs!  And that is very bad of me, for shame and all that stuff!

I’m gonna try to get my shit together and get back here sooner!  Promise.  And I’ll try to have something to say.

On April 23, 2006 my father-in-law, Marcos, passed away after being on hospice for a few months.  He had lived with us for about a year and seven months.  It all started when Henrietta fell in their home on the way back from the bathroom in the middle of the night.  We got a call from Marcos saying she couldn’t get up and we jumped in the car and raced over there.  Their house is about 30 minutes away.  I called the ambulance on the way there and we made it in about 15 minutes.  This is mainly due to no traffic in the middle of the night! *Mental note: have catastrophes  in the middle of night, ALWAYS.*  So we got there and H had, basically, broken everything.  Well, it seemed like it.  Tibia, hip, humerus, she was in bad shape.  So the little old lady with the severe osteoporosis went off to the hospital and Marcos came home to live with us.  John and I and our two teenage daughters in a three bedroom, one bath house.  With Marcos.  Together.

We got the hell out of that house as soon as we could and moved into a 4 bedroom 3 bath ASAP.  This helped a lot, but Marcos was starting to slide into a depression that he never really came out of.  I fed him an antidepressant everyday and we tried to keep his spirits up.  H stayed in the hospital for months.  Marcos went more and more downhill and his mental state deteriorated.  He couldn’t be left alone for any length of time.  He started falling.  He had a walker and refused to use it for the longest time.  The things that he determined were his duties, such as making coffee or going out to get the newspaper, became impossible for him to master.  He totally screwed up, I don’t know how many coffee makers.  Made HUGE messes in the kitchen attempting to make it multiple times a day and at various odd moments all night long.  He’d get up during the night over and over and attempt to make it outside to “get the paper”.  When I’d point out that it was dark out and night time, he was always very surprised and in the beginning he would voluntarily return to bed.  But, eventually, it became harder and harder to convince him of anything.

I got one of the cowbells that H uses to ring for me and and tied it to his walker with a plastic cable tie wrap.  That way, combined with the baby monitor there was absolutely no way he could make it out of his room with out me knowing at night.  I started jumping out of bed when when I heard him get up and running down the hall and closing the door at the end of it and holding it closed so it would seem locked when he got there after he had used the bathroom and was trying to make it to the front door or kitchen.  I remember him standing there kicking the door and fussing, while I was on the other side just praying for him to go back to bed.  At first he would.  Then it became a matter of he was going to find a way out and do what he wants.  The ruckus became bigger and bigger and John would come and try to convince him to go to bed too.

We had always just kept the front door keys in the door, (on the inside, of course),  and he would just head out anytime he wanted day or night.  So I took the keys out and we started keeping the door locked.  All. the. time.  He searched the house and even went through my purse until he found the keys.  It was like trying to deal with a highly intelligent toddler.  The scariest thing going and SO tiring.

The truly strange thing is he didn’t have Alzheimer’s.  Just old age senility combined with a HUGE overdose of old fashioned Mexican machismo.  That poor little old man had stubbornness in spades.  He was slowly dying and it was just not nearly fast enough for him.  He got to the point that he refused to take a bath and was only doing so about once every 10 days to two weeks under duress.  At some point John was the only one who could convince him.  This wouldn’t have been SO bad except he had become totally inept in the bathroom and would end up with shit everywhere.  Including on him.  He really did try, bless his heart, but he just didn’t have the strength to do anything more than just barely get there.  The commode seat and numerous other things in there were routinely smeared with poo.  I cannot tell you the amount of latex gloves, paper towels and spray bleach I went through.

By the time he died he was a little dried up husk of a man and I could pick him up in my arms like a baby and carry him to bed.  I did this the last time we changed his bed.  H was in the hospital with a broken hip from a totally unrelated incident and the continuous care hospice nurse suggested we put him in her hospital bed.  It was a good idea and we were changing his sheets anyway.  So I just picked him up and put him in her bed.  It was the strangest sensation.  This larger than life man that had always seemed so dominant was no where in there.  I think he died two days later and he had been so ready for so long.

Poor Henrietta was in the hospital and even missed his funeral.  When we told her she took it very well.  She said she knew he wasn’t going to make it much longer, and I’m sure that’s true.  He had a 21 gun salute and honor guard as he was a decorated WWII veteran who was wounded and permanently crippled in the rush on Iwo Jima.  He was someone to contend with…even before things were going downhill.

Well, there is more excitement here at the Nut House.  Last night when I put Henrietta to bed, her diaper was wet.  Not just a little, but soaked,   Great.  The catheter had failed during the day sometime.  Just a little bit of pee in the bag.  Sometimes moving her around and repositioning her gets it to start working again so I was keeping my fingers crossed that it would fix itself over night.  No.  This morning she woke up swathed in wet sheets and nightgown.  FREEZING, of course.  Everything was soaking wet including a diaper full of shit.  I ran in and threw a towel in the dryer and got John to call the nurse while I started trying to strip the bed with her in it and get a dry hospital chux under her.  Got the sheets, blanket and mattress protector off the bed and another chux under her, ran and got the towel out of the dryer and put it over her while I went and ran water in a basin and got washcloths and then bathed her off.  I was answering questions from John for him to answer the nurse on the phone.  He hung up and shouted down the hall that she would be coming at 3:00ish.  M’kay, fine.  She showed up and DID NOT BRING A NEW CATHER WITH HER.  This was a new one for me.  She said she thought she’d just wiggle around the old one and see if she could get it to work.  She explained that she would need to go back to the office to get one.  Well, I had already deflated the old one and removed it, I mean it was just in the way and doing nothing whatsoever.  So no way it was going back in.  She went out and rummaged around in her car and finally found a kit.  I happened to have an extra catheter.  So we poked around and never got any urine back and had no more to try with.  She left and I scheduled Paula to come and give it a shot after she left the office at the home health care place.  She brought 4 catheters and several kits for me to have on stock and we used all but one of them and never got any urine back in the tube.  She said it was time to let H have a rest and she’s coming back tomorrow.  woo-hoo…

Aren’t you glad I don’t have pictures with my post today?

John wanted me to call this diaper incident F.L.  Full Load.

Hello, people!  It’s been a while!  I am happy to report that I am still alive, only just barely it seems.  I am having a hard time shaking this funk I’m in and it really makes it hard to post.  Ideas that seem good to me late at night while watching Ferguson or trying to go to sleep, seem ridiculous the next day.  I am being a little depressed and my mind doesn’t want to work fast or freely anymore, just like the rest of me, I suppose!  Haha.

John was only off one day this week and it was yesterday.  We frantically ran around for three hours while the caregiver provider person was here and managed to take in lunch at a nearby Chinese restaurant, which I felt like was splurging because everything is so expensive now.  And I don’t just mean at the Chinese Restaurant, I mean everything.  At this point I am thinking the only way we can help pay for college is if we rent out the daughter in servitude.  I know what you’re thinking.  If she is in servitude, how will she go to school that is getting paid for?  Vicious circle.  I guess we could sell the younger daughter into servitude and she could support her sister’s need for knowledge, but I am thinking that would create a good deal of resentment and bitterness.  Just guessing.

That leaves us with Henrietta and I just can’t see anyone paying me for taking her off my hands.  Correct me if you know something I don’t.

I was soooo gonna do a post on Wednesday.  Things stewing around in my little head, fingers itching to type them out… whatev.  H. woke up that morning distressed that she was having stomach cramps, “all night”.

me: Why didn’t you ring the bell?

H: Oh, I didn’t want to bother you!

me: (teasing) Well, when you need to use the potty you have to tell me.  I can’t read your mind….!

H: (Smiling) Oh I don’t want to bother you at night, Krissa.

So all this happened BEFORE breakfast.  This is important because it is an UNSCHEDULED POOP, or a “U.P.”  This set the tone for the day.  She ate half her oatmeal very slowly and did the characteristic whiny and sing-song voice.  I knew she wouldn’t eat all of her food just because that is what she automatically does if anything is amiss in her life.  Unscheduled Poo, hangnail, cramp in her calf, cold chill while getting a bed-bath, coughing due to allergies/sinus drainage, whatever.  But, when I brought her the egg and little piece of sausage with a roll and jelly she, ate everything but about a bite and a half of the egg and a little tiny piece of the bread.  It’s like she was thinking, “I have to leave something on the plate, I’m sick!”

So when I picked up the tray and saw she hadn’t finished everything I knew it was going to be a day of pitifullness and staying in bed.  Which really does suit me fine.  She discovered other problems during the day and had a bout with indigestion and we did Malox and Sprite and a teaspoon of baking soda in water and everything we could think of, I don’t know how bad it really was, she was teary eyed all day and acting ready to cash in her chips cause he couldn’t burp.

Thursday she decided she needed to stay in bed because, “Maybe I had better just stay here… you know, to make sure.”  Make sure of what, I have no idea.  Make sure she can burp?  Make sure she only poops between the hours of 1:00 and 2:00PM?  Make sure I can still run up and down that long ass hall, (and getting longer all the time), 400 times a day?  Make sure the clapper on the cowbell she rings isn’t worn out from the day before?  These are questions I now wish I’d asked her.

So that’s it people.  That’s all I got.  Sorry I don’t feel the least bit like trying to produce anything remotely amusing.  I am hoping this will eventually pass.  I am sure it will.

Joan Crawford’s got nothing on me.  Just ask the wee small girl child that lives here with us.  Keelan is 17 and has some unusual ideas of good parenting.  She had a friend drop in to visit her last night about 9:30 and she and this other little girl sat in here, (the riff-raff room…where the teenagers hang out at my house) and visited and talked and giggled.  The usual.  Then at about 10:00 I came in here and talked to them.  Keelan popped up and  said that she was thinking about going camping.  Oh.  OK, with (insert friend’s name here)?  Well, yes.  With her.  “When?” I ask.  “Right now.”  After playing 20 questions like this to the tune of 136 questions I finally gathered that her friend had gone to the Texas City dike in a camper with another friend of theirs that I have never even met and said friend’s parents.  She had just left the camp site to “go home and catch a shower”.  So the thinking here is that she will swing by at 10:00pm and pick up Keelan and take her to spend the night with her and all these other people that I have never even met.  When I told Keelan that I would have to talk to them on the phone I got the response I was looking for, cause there was no way she was going.  She did all the requisite stomping, whining, and fuming, explaining that it was stupid to do that and totally embarrassing to her and “How COULD I?”  Etc. And then, per normal procedure, she said, “FINE!  I just won’t go!”  To which I said, “Fine.”, and was secretly very smug.

Now who’s a bad mom and who’s a clever mom?  OK, in the name of justice I guess I should add, who’s a bad, clever, mom?  I think I am a badass clever mom.

In other world shaking news, my dear brother of Squidspot fame has relocated an award I recieved a good while back from my good friend Trannyhead over at Law School Sucks, and so do lawyers.  It is now in the sidebar as it should be.  I really should stay on top of these things, but, alas, my housekeeping, er… “skills” are carried on over to my blogdom.  Such is life.  I am not going to complain cause hey, he got it done.  Yea, Cam!

John came in from work the other day in, quite possibly the worst mood I have ever had the misfortune of being subjected to.  We’re talking Lewis Black on a bad day.  Just cranky as all get-out.  I went ahead and did the requisite wasting of my time by asking him what was the matter and was careful to have the look of concern placed squarely on my face.  I looked attentive and mildly distressed as he gave me the requisite answer of “Nothing is wrong”.

Right.

Moving right along then.

And this is what gets me.  I can’t understand getting that response from him to a question that is reasonable to ask any person who has announced his homecoming by slamming the car door hard enough to register on the Richter scale, literally throwing the loaf of bread he brought home across the entire kitchen to land only partially intact on the counter, (part in the sink), and tossing me a glare when I said, “Oh!, but…but, the bread….  Even the dogs, (whom I tell you can sense evil), were scarce and they always go into their frantic jubilant dance when Daddy comes home.  Not this time, baby.

So, let me get this straight.  “Nothing is wrong?”

“No. Nothing is wrong.”

And this is how it works sometimes at this house.  I learned a long time ago that if I keep on asking and asking eventually he will tell me and he just gets all worked up about it again.  I mean I know it’s not something that’s my fault cause, for heaven’s sake he’s been at work all day.  So I ignore him and after a couple of hours or so he’s fine.  Eventually I’ll ask him what was wrong and he’ll tell me and it will all be OK and he will be over it.  But every once in a while, when I suspect there must be some sort of planet misalignment or full moon or someone at work bitchslapping him, I get this kind of attitude when he gets here and I NEVER SEE IT COMING.  I’d like to say at this time that I always handle it beautifully, but it really happens so seldom that I have to stop and take stock and think about the propper response.  And anytime there is a SWAT truck parked outside my house, I have neglected to do that.

The stupid “caregiver provider” never showed up today. She made it out here last Friday and did the requisite 3 hour stay, only I was here for most of it. She also gave H her bed-bath and dressed her and pottied her and whatnot. It was very nice. However she is supposed to be here every Tuesday and Friday at 1:00. I called the office at about 2:00 and they called her cell phone and left a voice mail message. About 3:00 she called me and said she had been at the emergency room. She said she is pregnant and had started bleeding. Then she said she is OK they gave her some medicine. She wants to come tomorrow morning and do the whole thing then. How should I feel about someone who supposed to be preggers and having bleeding problems showing up and horsing H around and picking her up and all the job entails? I am betting her employer doesn’t know she’s pregnant. If she really is.

I was looking at Twitter and noticed that Holly over at Anglophile Football Fanatic, commented that the UPS man rang the doorbell and she went into a meltdown of sorts trying to make sure “the boy” didn’t wake up. This got me to thinking about how determined I was that my kids could sleep through anything. I thought I had the perfect plan. I wanted them to be able to sleep through any kind of noise or silence, so, every other night, for a very long time, from day one at home I left the radio on or the tv or something noise making. Not very loud, but loud enough to be heard. And every other night it was off and there was silence. Wanna know how they turned out? Well, I have to say that when they were little it did work. Noise never bothered them, but, they didn’t have to have it to sleep, either. However, now? The older one needs quiet and the younger one, noise. I AM TELLING YOU I DON’T THINK THEY’RE MINE.

Poor older daughter has now contracted the evil virus that has marauded through this family. The elderly, delicate immune system of H didn’t contract this plague. Kes did. Go figure. After John and I did. I have to take the credit here for starting the entire epidemic.

The poor child is very susceptible to sinus infections and is trying hard to hold one off. I like to think she inherited only good things from me. I lie to myself about this a lot.

Yesterday when I went with her to Walmart, I picked up a thing I’d been toying with trying for a while. It’s called a neti pot. I had seen Dr. Oz do a demonstration with an unsuspecting audience member on Oprah. It looked very easy and he said it’s been around for hundreds of years. Also, the lady that tried it suffered with sinusitis and she really liked it. So I mixed it up and walked slowly cause I am so freakin old ran upstairs to try it out for the first time to show Kes how to do it and have her try it. It worked just like it was supposed to and so she did it and finally got some flow going through. A LOT of impacted snot came out and she felt much better. She could even breathe through her nose. Click on the link and watch the video and you will see why I went up there knowing I would need to demonstrate it’s use before I would ever be able to convince her to try to use it. It seems like it would hurt immensely to me, just because it hurts so much when you get water up your nose. But, it really doesn’t and it feels sooooo much better when you are congested. Or have allergies!

I am convinced all of you people on the intertubes should get one and use it the next time you feel snotty. Snotty, not snobby. Well, I guess you could use it if you feel snobby…but why?

John called from work and said the dickhead in charge there wants a current copy of his resume, could I please email it on over. Uhh, YES. Am I wrong or is it only a good thing if he wants to see this?

WordPress doesn’t acknowledge the word “dickhead”. Or there is another spelling I am unaware of. Apparently WP has never met this guy.

Mo’ later.