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.

Today has been a bust.  The caregiver provider was supposed to show up at 1:00 and let John and I run out and madly dash about doing things together willy-nilly until we had exhausted our three hours and had to return to take care of H.  She never showed up.  Now remember, this is the “new” provider that is, not the same one that had trouble showing up a while back.  So I called the number we had for her cell phone and, surprise, surprise, no answer.  I next tried calling the company that was sending her out here.  The lady told me that she had called her and told her that she didn’t feel well and that she had called us and left a message for us telling us that she wasn’t showing up.  Left a message?  Why on earth would she lie and say that?  That makes it sound as if I WAS ABLE TO LEAVE THE HOUSE AND NOT ANSWER THE DAMNED PHONE.  Ahem…  Anyway, there was no message on the answering machine and we had been here all day.  Waiting.  I was not a happy camper.  I told the lady so and she said that maybe I should call the… “provider’s” home number and she gave it to me and, of course, no one answered.  I called the company back and told her I want someone else and it’s not that she was feeling poorly, it’s that she’s a terrible liar and that really chaps me arse.  So tomorrow afternoon some new chick named Maria is supposed to show up and we will see.  John works a half day tomorrow and so we should get to do something.  I have an exciting list, too.  Let’s see… post office, Lowe’s, grocery….oh gawd…

The exciting thing that happened today is that my wonderful husband has figured out how to get the pics in the memory of my camera onto the memory card and onto the pooter.  Actually, I got them onto the pooter, but he did the rest.  He may get some booty tonight…

On Sunday, August 21st, the same day Henrietta came home from the hospital, Kes came running in to get John and I early in the morning.  I mean DAYBREAK.  She had gone out to the garage to investigate what on earth our little dog, Kissy, had been barking at.  It was a stray cat.  Don’t know why the cat decided it wanted in our garage.  There is no food in there or anything like that.  While she was looking at it something flew across the garage and landed, spooking her no end.  It was this little bitty owl.

Now I have quite a history with owls and I will update you on all that in my next post, given something earth shattering doesn’t happen in my life to supersede it, i.e. H has a blowout that completly dissolves a diaper or the provider care person shows up and John and I have sex for three hours in some seedy motel.  Don’t hold your breath, cause H is finished with her antibiotics and is no longer suffering with diarrhea.

I just read this to John and his first response was, “Are you sure your mom can read all that?”  I said, “She knows how to read…anything. “  He looked a bit desperate and responded, “YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!”

Is it a baby or just a small breed?  I dunno.  But now that I have the pics on the pooter I will try to look it up.  Tomorrow.  John wants my attention now and I have to go…..

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…

Sometimes you can escape the smartasses at home, let your guard down, and still find yourself not entirely safe.

Have any of you ladies ever heard of a Diva Cup?  Maria discusses the use of one and the benefits of it.  Well, that little gizmo may just be the best thing since sliced bread.  Here is her first post on the “non-absorbent menstrual cup”.  The Diva Cup is also environmentally friendly because it is reusable and not disposable.  Read about it and tell me what you think.  If I had any need for it whatsoever I would have one ordered right now.  I had a thermal ablation several years ago and am done with periods.  (Yet, I still have ovaries, uterus, tubes, all my bits and pieces, and there was NO cutting.  Quite possibly the best thing ever for people who don’t want any more children and have a healthy reproductive package. It was an outpatient procedure with minimal recovery time.)   I am going to show the info on the Diva Cup to Kes and Keelan and see if either one will consider it.  They are both on Depo Provera shots due to their intense dislike of periods, but neither one wants to continue since the injection of hormones into their little bodies causes weight gain and huger than normal boobs.  I am thinking this new cup method may be the way to go.

Now, watch out for whiplash while I attempt to segue into another conservation area.  Just a very slight change in subject…

My hot water heater is at one end of my house and my dishwasher at the other.  (Still with me?)  I use it only when it is full and don’t use the “pot scrubber” cycle, just the “regular” one or the “light”.  The dishwasher repair guy said to cut down on the electric bill make sure the hot water is flowing in the kitchen sink before turning on the dishwasher so it doesn’t have to use so much electricity to heat the water to the proper temp before filling.  HOWEVER, I have to run water through my tap for a good couple of minutes to get the hot water to that end of the house.  My environmental question is this: In this case is it better to save electricity or water?

I gotta go over to Maria’s site and alert her to my concerns and see what she thinks…

H is home from hospital, though for how long I can’t say.  Her UTI seemed well under control when she left on Sunday and her urine was clear and light colored.  She still feels bad and is very tired and her urine is quite dark again.  They sent us home with a Rx for more antibiotics and she has been taking them as prescribed.  Oh well.  I am betting she will be going back in the next couple of days.  God, I hope not.

On the up side!!!

Kes and Keelan had their first day at college and as senior in high school on Monday.  They both really excited about the upcoming year.  So am I!

The weekend before school started Keelan was at a friends house and a… small herd of boys showed up at the front door to see her.  I was quite busy doing something or another and met them at the door before they could ring the bell and set the obnoxious dog off barking.  They asked if she was here and I said no, she was at Anna’s house.  They left and I called her later when I wasn’t so tied up doing things and told her that some boys were here and did they call her on her cell?  “No, who was it?”  Er, I didn’t know…  “What did they look like?”  Tall, skinny with stringy hair.  (Hint, all the kids she knows look like that.)  “MOM!  What color was their hair?”  I don’t know, brown?  Blondish?  “Mom! was it ____?  Or _____?”  I dunno, Keelan.  They all look pretty much the same to me and I didn’t really pay any attention cause I was in a hurry.  “Gawd, Mom!  What if one of them was my future husband?”  I dunno, what if all of them were your future husbands?  “MOM!”  KEELAN!

Later she let me know who they were and that there were two of them and not three as I thought there was.  Also that one of them had pink streaks died in his hair.  I said something like, Huh?…pink? Really?

I then promised to be sure and ask any boys that come to the door while she is out if they are her future husband.

“GAWD MOM!”

Sometimes you just can’t make people happy…

Before I go, however, I’d like to leave you with a few gems I came across when I was recently back at our mom and dad’s.  Call it revenge for the pictures Krissa posted of me back in July for my birthday.

Enjoy, and please comment!

(to view in their full-sized glory, click on them!)

About 3:30 Thursday morning she rang the bell and I went in and she was shaking really, really hard.  I felt of her and she had no fever so I thought she was surely having a really bad anxiety attack.  She has before, so I got her an ativan and gave it to her and told her not to worry she’d feel better soon and she did and fell asleep within about 10 to 15 minutes.  I left her bedside table lamp on and went back to bed.  Next morning I went in and looked at her and turned off the lamp and tiptoed out.  The anxiety attacks really take it out of her, though she doesn’t have them often, so I wasn’t surprised when she slept in late.  I went by her room about 11:30 and she was sleeping but the lamp was on.  Strange.  So she had been up, but why had she turned the lamp on, it’s daylight and there was plenty of light in the room.  I walked over and looked at her and fliped off the lamp and opened the blinds a bit and she opened her eyes and looked at me and started trying to talk.  It was like something out of a nightmare.  I couldn’t make out what she was saying at first, her words were slurred and she couldn’t talk loud enough at all either.  I got down and listened and asked her questions and she said things that made no sense at all.  So I started calling people and ended with 911.  They came and got her and while they were here assessing her, the hot, young cutie that was doing most of the talking said that yes, she could be having a stroke, but the fact that I was treating her for yet another UTI, (urinary tract infection), told him that she could possibly be septic and the symptoms mimic those of a stroke very closely.  I, personally, thought it wasn’t possible, just because her previous UTI had gotten much worse than this one.  With this one she didn’t even  have any symptoms.  I would have never known she had one without the urinalysis they did as a follow up from the previous UTI.  In hind site I can see that it was all the same one and the antibiotics from the first one didn’t completely get rid of it.

So H gets hauled off to the hospital and I went with her.  My friend, Lisa followed in her car.  This was about noon and she went straight to an ER room and stayed there for a few hours and was put in a room by about 9:30.  They have, by now run every test under the sun and determined that:

A) She freaks out when in the MRI machine.

B) She did not have a stroke.

C) “She’s a pistol.”

D) When she misses her dose of Miralax she can’t poo.

E) When she gets two doses of Miralax too close together she has diarrhea.

F) When I find out they are running all kinds of stupid tests that don’t make a hill of beans difference, just stress her out,  I get pissed off.

G) When I call and have them leave a note on her chart for the Dr. to call me, I mean it and will call and chew out everybody else in the nurse’s station if he doesn’t.  (He makes rounds at 6:00AM.)

The night before she had these problems at home, when I changed her diaper and put her to bed, I noticed she had a strange line of diaper rash kinda down on her thigh a little bit.  I was telling Lisa about it in the hospital after we got her in a room.  I looked down at H and asked her if she’d mind if I showed Lisa her diaper rash. (At this point I should point out that Lisa’s mom died of multiplemyloma and Lisa took care of her up until her death, so she knows at least some, and usually a lot, about every aspect of care giving.)  Immediately after I asked her if she’d mind me showing Lisa her rash, without pausing, she looked at Lisa, pulled a deadpan face, and said, “It’ll cost you $20.00.”  Lightning fast wit, that one.  The nurse came in and she looked at her and said “It’ll cost you 20, too!”  She died laughing and we were all giggling uncontrollably.   She also told us to tell the EMT that she’s single.  My gawd, I’ve got to watch her like a hawk!

H) She charges for a peek at her hooch.

The other day, Monday in fact, John and I spent the better part of the day on a not so fun project.  For a while now every time I opened the flatware drawer there seemed to be a fine coating of flour or powdered sugar or Bisquick, something of that nature, on the utensils.  I just thought one of the girls spilled some in there and not much more of it.  After several times, though, I became suspicious.  I reached inside the drawer and wiped my fingers along the underside of the counter top.  Upon the removal of my hand I promptly threw up.   No, not really, but I wanted to.  White, powdery mold.  I grabbed a flashlight and looked in at the backs of the cabinets.  Nothing.  No water stains or mold or even cobwebs.  Very clean.  HOWEVER, when I shined my light up at the underside of the Formica it was all covered in the white mold.  So when John got home and after a little inter net research we went out and got some bleach a spray bottle and some sponges.  We removed the drawers and all of the contents of the cabinets before I spent about 5 minutes on my hands and knees with my head stuck in the cabinets spraying that bleach all over the underneath of the counter top.  Man!  That stuff burns the eyes!  We waited a while and repeated the process.  Or, I should say I repeated the process!  John has “bad knees” that bother him every time there is the need to crawl around on the tile floor.  Whatever.

The neat thing is that the mold had disappeared immediately after I sprayed the first time.  I mean not a trace of it anywhere.  Poof!  Disappeared in a cloud of… well, not mold.  Has anything like this happened to anyone else.  There was no moisture under there and never had been, and it was only on that side of the sink, not the other side.  Weird.

This time the 3 year old hellion that was on the trampoline with his mom last time was running all over the house and being an Unholy Terror.  He went outside with his dad to get something out of the car and ran back to the door ahead of his dad and struck the leaded glass panel with his hands and broke a good sized hole out of the bottom of it.

PLUS, I found out some things about their finances while they were here that really chapped me arse.  I know, I know, what business is it of mine?  Plenty, it turns out.  SIL is forever going on about how poor ____ and _______ are so broke and need money so bad and they need groceries and can we spare some money to help them out?  So I usually fork over a check for $35.00 or $40.00.  Well, SIL said something about how you can get online on her son’s TV set.  I looked at him and said, “Oh?  How do you do that?  Special kind of TV?”  No, it’s with his PlayStation 3.  “Oh, I didn’t know PlayStation 3’s could get online…”  No, not all of them, just a special kind.  “Oh, wow.  How much are they?”  Five hundred dollars.

The little shit can afford to buy the most expensive games out there, yet, apparently, has some difficultly providing for his ever increasing family.  No longer my worry.  The well has dried completely up.  Next time SIL tells me they are near death and starvation, I will tell her to suggest to them hocking the PS3.

Mark My Words inter-tubes, no more free rides for these jokers and I may even cut off my family…er, no, before I could finish this sentence Keelan called and wants to borrow $10.00 to go to the movie.  But, ya know what?  She’ll pay me back,  Without me having to ask for it!

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In…more upbeat news, I have a new blog award!  My brother, Cam, bestowed it on me and while the cute little hiney on the award doesn’t look anything like H’s little shriveled up butt, I appreciate it, none the less.  Actually, I appreciate the fact that it doesn’t look like her at all.  He pinched the pic from this post of Big Hair Envy’s.

In appreciation of this cute little hiney, and because of the many diapers changed while dealing with all other manner of shit, I would like for Angie to have the first Loaded Diaper Award.  Congratulations, Angie!