I haven’t written a blog in so long even though there have been plenty of things to write about.  This won’t be a long one.  This is what I will call a ‘cleaning house blog’.   I am the kind of person who simple cannot start a project without first cleaning up my work space.  It doesn’t matter what it is.  I’ve always been this way, and it is both good and bad.  Good because you start with a clean slate where everything you will need is in place, easy to find, and the work surface is uncluttered.  It’s an uncluttering of the mind, a rebooting of the computer.  This need to ‘clean house’  first is only bad in the way that it makes me hold off on starting things if there is no time to clean.  So that’s what this is.  Today I relearned how to edit and create blogs (because I forgot – the same way that I forget how to download pictures from my camera …… every time) I reread the virtual manual, and I am good to go.   Now….hopefully I will come up with a good blog before I forget again!

Last year at almost this same time I posted a blog about a woman named Betty who was in need of your prayers.
You answered and 80 year old Betty became, in the words of her doctors, a medical miracle.
In the strange way that life unfolds itself we now find ourselves a year later with Betty thriving and suddenly her 80 year old husband, Tom, has come down with the most aggressive form of Leukemia.  
Tom and Betty have a love that in this divorce driven world gives you hope.  Tom needs your prayers and thoughts and any bit of positive energy that you can send up to the heavens.
Give it all you can spare.
Linda

Well, it happened again.  Several times in my life I have found abandoned baby birds. It's always heartbreaking and usually ends badly. 

Yesterday I ended up with 2 baby Eastern Phoebe chicks.  I think they were victims of a parasitic Cowbird.
The Cowbird lays one egg in the nest of other birds.  The chick hatches faster, is bigger, leaves the nest early forcing the foster parents to care for it and abandon the tiny chicks that are their real babies.  We saw the Cowbird chick leave the nest.  The adults never returned to the nest that whole day as they were busy protecting and feeding the Cowbird chick.

So, my nephew and my son took down the nest that was built over the front door and brought it to me.
The two chicks were so weak and dehydrated and no longer lifting their heads for food, but thanks to the good old internet I found a site that told me what to do.  A little sugar water in an eye dropper perked them up enough to get them to beg for food again and.  I was able to feed them (ground up egg yolk, dried flies and oatmeal) several times  until dark and they made it through the night just fine. I got up at 5am to start feeding them again.  Ah...motherhood.

I've tried to warn Jake not to get too attatched because you just never know but for now things look good.
For the next few weeks we will be catching a lot of bugs. Isn't that what everyone does in the summer?

If anyone has any advice, bring it on.......

I have dogs.  I have three very large, hairy dogs. Three German Shepherds with an incredible knack for shedding.

One of my dogs is a male named Rodin.  He is a beautiful dog with conformation that is perfect in every way except for his ears which are too far on the sides of his head giving him the appearance of Yoda when he is not at attention.

He is a great dog, loving and lazy.  He also loves birds.  I often catch him sitting staring up at the sky. 

A few weekends ago on a sunny Sunday we were all in the house including, or so I thought, all three dogs.  I was working in the basement and Jake was playing the X-Box version of working in the basement.

When I was about to quit we heard a loud sound and then a dog crying in pain.  It had come from outside.  When the front door was opened Rodin came running in on three legs unable to put weight on the right hind.  There was a tear in the skin on the inside of his styfle (dog knee) and a tiny scratch on the tip of his nose.  Nothing else that we could see. 

We had no explaination except that Jake said he had seen a fox on the outside of the gate.  We have had them in our yard before because they are small enough to fit through the bars of the gates.  I knew that I would have to take him to the vet for stitches, and he was still unwilling to put weight on the leg. 

Now of course it was Sunday which meant Emergency vet as apposed to family vet.  We loaded him up and all headed off to sit in the Emergency room for 2 and a half hours.  We watched other emergencys more pressing than ours come and go.  There was some high drama just like on TV.  By now Rodin was stretched out on the floor as comfy as could be.  Finally we saw the doctor, explained our Fox theory as best we could and left Rodin there for his stiches.  He would have to be put under for the x-rays and stitching.  We left with instructions to call at 9pm that night to see IF...IF...he had gone into surgery yet.  I could then either pick him up at 3am or at 7:30 am. (Emergency vets work during all the hours that your regular vet doesn't ...all the inconvenient hours)

We drove home and at 8pm I sent Jake to take his shower before bed.  He came back a minute later and said... "Mom...did you mess up my bathroom rug and open the window?"
Yeah, I thought...Mom's do that....

We all headed to Jake's bathroom and sure enough the rug was bunched up underneath the window which was wide open, glass and screen, to the cold winter night.  Then we noticed the paint chips on the floor.  Looking behind the opened door we saw the scratch marks that had torn up the paint on the inside.

Like detectives we went out with flashlights and found small drops of blood in the snow beneath the window along with one tuft of hair. 

Rodin, my lazy German Shepherd had become locked in the bathroom and, after opening the window and screen with his nose, had jumped out.

We stood in the cold night air looking at that window.  The bottom ledge is over 16 feet from the ground.

At 6:30am I drove to the Emergency vet.  The x-rays revealed no broken bones or internal damage.  I walked out with my bill and my dog.

My German Shepherd thinks he's a bird and it nearly cost him his life and totally cost me.......over $1300.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the lady behind the counter at my local deli and convenience store just does not like me and I don’t know why.

 

She is an older lady, very short and, in a weird sort of way, looks a bit like my mother if you ran my tall, attractive, Norwegian mother threw a compactor.

 

I’m a smiley person and general friendly to everyone including strangers so it is a mystery to me what I could have done to offend her.  She has never even given me the chance to offend her.  She never speaks to me.

This has been going on for all of the 10 years that I’ve lived here.

But the other day we reached a new level.

 

With 4 young cousins visiting me from Austria I was going through a lot of bagels and pastry.  They wanted an American experience and bagels seemed to be it.  So I stopped into the deli after dropping Jake at school.  There is a counter behind the checkout that holds two trays, one for bagels the other for pastries.  Next to the trays are three stacks of paper bags, small, medium and large.  I reached for a large bag and was greeted with  “That’s a big bag” in an unfriendly tone from the short lady who never speaks to me.

I smiled and said “ I know, I have cousins eating me out of house and home and I need a lot of bagels.”  As I was filling the bag she spoke again.

“You’re not going to take all of them are you?  There won’t be any left for anyone else.”  ……………….

 

I kid you not.

 

Have you ever been in a store where the clerk didn’t want to sell you something?  There was no one else in the store to even sympathize with me.  No one to share a “can you believe this” look.

 

In a meek Minnesota fashion I put back half of the bagels and replaced them with pastries.  As soon as I got in the car I called Craig.  He got a laugh out of it but he also made a suggestion.   Had I ever thought of asking her what I must have done to offend her?  So the next day when Jake and I again missed the bus by a mere minute and I drove him to school, I stopped in to the deli.  There she was in all her glory, short, stumpy and angry, three of the 7 dwarves rolled into one.

 

I smiled and picked up a small paper bag and said in my most charming voice “ How many can I buy today?”  She said nothing.  We were again alone in this small country store except for the deli guys behind the counter in the next room.  So as I placed my bag on the checkout counter I said very sincerely “I’m sorry, I just have to ask.  Have I ever done anything to offend you, because it feels like I have?”

She looked up at me and said…………”No”  with the most deadpan face and voice and went right back to punching buttons on the cash register.

Not another word.

I took my three bagels home to my hungry Austrian cousins.

The lady behind the counter at my local deli does not like me......because I am tall!