Unexpected bird watching

Today I got a chance to do a little unexpected bird watching when this hawk flew into my office window at full speed. He scared the living daylights out of me as I was talking on the phone. I dropped the phone and screamed which was actually pretty hilarious.

After he hit the window he laid there with his wings out and I thought he was dead at first. Then he popped up and sat on the ground for awhile. After a co-worker tried to open the window he ducked under the fence next door but instead of leaving he then hopped up and sat on the fence outside my window and just sat there looking at the building and starring at me like "What the hell just happened? How do I get in there too?" He finally flew up into a tree outside my window and just finally flew off an hour and a half later.

After studying the body print that he left on my window I realized that I had seen it somewhere before. I went upstairs to Reception where an even clearer bird print could be found on the window. Obviously this bird is determined to get in our office one way or another and he hasn't learned his lesson yet.

Mother Nature rocks

When Hannah started kindergarten we planted an apple tree in our front yard. The plan was that every year on the first day of school we would take her picture in front of the tree and every year both she and tree would get bigger and taller.

We haven't done anything with the tree. We don't prune it. We don't fertilize it. We don't spray pesticides on it. We let nature take its course and just hope that the tree doesn't die before Hannah graduates from high school.

During the first few years the apple tree produced a sad little apple here or there. Even when they grow big they end up being sort of rotten and full of bugs. The tree is on the far side of our lawn away from the driveway and this year is the first year that I've really noticed a lot of apples on the tree. Big, bright, red apples. Lincoln went out and picked one this morning.

Check it out! There is something to be said for just letting Mother Nature do her thing.

Looks like we're pushing the anniversary plans back a few days

Next Wednesday is our 9th wedding anniversary. Our plan was to go out to dinner and celebrate on our actual anniversary. I suppose we still could but I would like to be able to have some wine with our fancy dinner so I think we'll be pushing it back a few days.

Earlier today I found out I have a bacterial infection from my little dip in the pool last week to repair the hole in the bottom of the pool. The doctor told me she'd call in a prescription for antibiotics for me but that I had to make sure not to drink any alcohol while I was on it. I have no problems not drinking for a week while I'm on the pills but I thought it strange that she really emphasized this point. Medicine always has a "do not drink alcohol" label on the bottle but usually it doesn't mean that much. I mean, a glass of wine wouldn't kill you.

Lincoln picked up the prescription for me and I checked out the warnings on the bottle and it had the standard "Do not drink alcoholic beverages when taking this medicine" but this time it always said "check all medicine or food labels to help avoid hidden sources of alcohol". What? Wow. This sounds pretty serious. Usually when I get a new medication I skim the informational pamphlet on the side effects but this time I actually read the entire thing. One important thing I picked up on was that not only can I not drink alcohol for the 7 days that I am taking the medicine but that I'm not allowed to drink for 3 days afterwards either. Oh my.

This is where the anniversary dinner comes into play. My medicine will be done on Monday night and our anniversary is Wednesday night. I figured I'd email my Aunt Lin - who is a brilliant pharmacist - and get her take on whether or not we should move our anniversary dinner. Here is her reply:

Don't drink alcohol !!!! I think I'd move the anniversary dinner back a few days just to be on the safe side. If you still have any left in your system you could get violently sick to your stomach.

Happy Anniversary !!

Violently? Um, okay.

And I love how she followed up "violently sick" with a cheery "Happy Anniversary!"

Needless to say we'll be moving the dinner reservation.

Unintended consequences

The good news: The patch I put in the pool during my little swim last week is still holding and looks to be hanging in there for the long haul.

The bad news: My little swim in the untreated pool - and subsequent long hot bath - resulted in a delightful little bacterial infection on my person.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Do not adjust your screen. This post is in fact leaning to the right.

As I've declared many times on this blog, I am a Democrat. My husband has a tendency to lean a little more in the other direction. There is one rant, however, that I go off on every so often where Lincoln waits for me to finish before chuckling to himself as I wrap up by saying "Yes, I know that is a bit of Reagan-era trickle down economics but I don't care."

If you earn your money, you should have the right to spend it however you want. That's not to say that I think the wealthy shouldn't be taxed more. I definitely think they should. I mean, if you can drop a down payment on a Porsche you should chip in a little more than the single mom working three jobs and still barely putting food on the table. I'm just saying....

But that's not the point of this post.

I absolutely hate when people say "I can't believe they spent so much money on that!"

For example:

I can't believe those celebrities spent $1 million dollars on their wedding! Don't they know there are homeless people in Los Angeles that could have used that money?

OR

I can't believe the President went on vacation at Martha's Vineyard when I don't have a job. Not everyone gets to take a vacation this summer thanks to this mess of an economy.

OR

I can't believe she spent $1200 on a washing machine! Doesn't she know that some mothers have to go to the laundry mat with their 3 children in tow?

Let's just take a look at these situations one by one, shall we?

You're right. That celebrity could have run to Las Vegas and eloped therefore freeing up that $1 million dollars to be donated to charity OR they could have done exactly what they did and put $1 million dollars into the event planning industry thereby helping the businesses of florists, caterers, security companies, wedding planners, and limo drivers and the hundreds of employees that count on them for their jobs. Better that than them snorting it up their nose in a drug fueled binge on the flight to Vegas.

Yes, the President of the United States went on vacation where he paid for his vacation rental with his own money. He earned it. His wife earned it. They worked hard for their money before he became President and they work hard for it now. Let them spend the damn money -once again - helping shore up the financials of the person who rented the house to them as well as many of the businesses on the Vineyard that benefited from the First Family taking a vacation in their town. What would you rather he do with the money, mail it to you so that you can go on vacation yourself? If you deserve a vacation you will have earned your own damn money.

As you can tell by the "Blogs I Love to Read" on the side of this page, I read Heather Armstrong's blog at http://www.dooce.com/ and also follow her on Twitter where she has well over a million followers. She recently purchased a washing machine for $1200 and it didn't work. She got into a battle with the manufacturer because she was having trouble getting it fixed. People called her a bully for publicly pressuring a company to make right on a brand new piece of equipment that didn't work. God forbid she spent money "frivolously" AND expect it work. The horror! A local appliance company volunteered to give her a free machine (she's a bit of a celebrity in the mommy blogger world) and she in turn donated that machine to a women's shelter because she could afford to buy her own machine. Wasn't that nice of her? No. It wasn't enough for the angry masses. They were appalled that she would have bought a $1200 machine in the first place when there are people out there that can't afford a washing machine at all. But she can people!!! Let her spend her damn money on whatever she wants. Isn't everyone screaming these days that sales are dragging and bringing down our economy? If she wants to but money into the economy let her! Or your (admittedly stereotypical) unemployed ass sitting at home spending WAY too much time meddling in the lives of others will never find a job in this current economy.

And now I'm going to step down off of my soapbox and move it back firmly to the left after one final thought.

If Brad Pitt wants to build a habitat for his kids' gerbils I am sure that those in the pet, building materials, and animal waste removal industries don't mind that he dropped $80,000 on such a stupid thing. It's not like if he didn't build the gerbil habitat he was going to send the money to you anyway - so shut up and quit your bitching.

In the spirit of Shel Silverstein

Hannah loves the Shel Silverstein books. She reads The Light in the Attic and Where the Sidewalk Ends constantly which I find really cute since I loved those books when I was a kid.

Last week at Open House she had a poem on her desk that she had written for a school assignment. It cracked me up because with a little tweaking it could totally pass as a Shel Silverstein poem.

I Can't Do My Homework
by: Hannah Snow

Oh no!
My rabid cat tore it!
Spelling flew out the window!
Math got eaten by a dog
I fell asleep during Social Studies
Had to take the dog for a walk
Can't do it now, I've got to eat breakfast
My brother just hid it!
Oh and now it's torn
I can't do my homework

Working together

Yesterday morning we worked on getting the house cleaned. Hannah wanted to mop the kitchen floor which of course meant that Jake wanted to do it too. We have a Clorox mop but we were out of solution so they were using a different mop solution that we have in a separate spray bottle. Hannah was trying to teach Jake how to spray it while she mopped and it was just too cute for words. Of course what started off as entertaining to the two of them quickly went down hill when Jake wouldn't listen to Hannah. In the second video Hannah walks off to go get a tissue and her sigh as she walks away is too precious for words.

Little brothers....they can be such a pain.