Monthly Archives: February 2007

The One-Eyed Crow

Posted on February 28, 2007 by wendy| 4 Comments

I am not proud. I confess, we were eating a fast food lunch in our parked car the other day in Poulsbo, when who should pop onto the hood but a one-eyed crow. You should see the other guy, he seemed to say with his proud stance.

“Ewwww! Yuck!” I exclaimed as my hubbie rolled down his window. He held out his hand and fed a piece of french fry directly to the injured crow, now near the windshield. He seemed to be compensating just fine for his deficiency (the bird). He deftly snatched the french fry and did not fall over or bump into anything.

“Hey, I’m trying to eat here!” I cried. It was kind of gross looking, the scarred divot in the left side of his head. Poor thing.

“How would you like to be a one-eyed crow in a world of two-eyed crows?” my spouse asked.

“It would not be my first choice.”

Always a fan of the underdog, my husband feels especially fond of crows. His father rescued several baby crows, among other animals, back in Alaska when my husband was young. One in particular, Tar Baby, made quite an impression. Like a member of the family, Tar Baby would fly over to greet my husband and his brothers as they walked home from elementary school. Eventually strong and fully grown, Tar Baby flew off, but did come back for a few visits before his last “conversation” with my husband’s dad, who knew Tar Baby was saying a final farewell.

Eventually, our little junk food crow got his fill and casually hopped off, looking for his next culinary coup. We were not taking any crows home that day, but our daughter would be taking home a lasting impression of daddy helping an unfortunate crow, like the generation before her.

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Posted in animals, Bainbridge Island, WA

A Napless Wonder

Posted on February 27, 2007 by wendy| 2 Comments

I am in mourning (and not just for my favorite hair stylist moving away and Top Chef being over). I loved them so. I miss them so. I looked forward to them everyday. And then, one day last week, naptime was gone. Gone like a ’59 Cadillac. Poof! What are those phases of grief? I sped past denial and slammed into shock. Okay, Kid is 3 1/2. I am lucky by some standards to get this far. I know. Now, I am trying to instruct her on “quiet time” which means staying in her room and not disassembling her bed, swinging from the shelves or, God help me, performing the “vengeful pee” in the corner. How do other moms do it? The ones I’ve asked have lots of trouble having any kind of quiet time. Thus far, Kid plays in her room initially and then starts silently creeping out, sometimes “in hiding” with a blanket over her, like a little fleece ghost with butterflies on it. Maybe for my own quiet time, I could hide under a blankie?

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Posted in kid, parenting

news flash: Kid can’t wait

Posted on February 26, 2007 by wendy| Comments Off

While waiting in traffic on the way to Silverdale with my sick laptop, Kid asked for the bazillionth time when we were going to BE THERE. We told her she had to wait. That’s when we got the unfortunate news: “waiting” was not in her brain, she said. Yes, sad but true. It went out the hole in her brain. Waiting is like air, she informed us, and it can float right out of a hole in her brain. What is this hole? Is that that hole that babies have in their skull? She is her father’s daughter, so maybe she used a power drill just so “waiting” would get out of her brain? And how is it that “waiting” is gone, but “yelling” “incessant talking” and “constant busyness” are still there? That does not seem fair to me. Is there a reinstall button for “waiting”? Can we put it back with a few other items that escaped, like “sleeping all night” and “trying new foods”? Maybe this hole works in both directions? Or will I just have to wait?

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Posted in kid, parenting, questions

Crash-Bam-Bing!

Posted on February 25, 2007 by wendy| 4 Comments

What did you do this weekend? Uh-huh, sounds fun. Me? Oh, my weekend sucked the big SUCK. My computer and website had a head-on collision and crashed. Both. Did I have a handy backup? Uh, nooooooooo. Let this be a lesson to you all. Even though it is about as much fun as vacuuming, backing up, turns out, is a good idea. Oh-vey! We drove all the way to Silverdale so the geeks at Best Buy could help me under my warranty. He looked at my machine, looked at me and was all Dan Rather, bad news. But! I could use the recovery disk to perform a “nondestructive” repair and not lose anything. OK. Sounds doable. I go home, fix a stiff one, and pull out that recovery disk. Ten seconds in and it tells me I am about to lose EVERYTHING. Where’s my “nondestructive” repair? Where’s the love? This is what I get for doing anything computer related, downloading programs, dinking around with stuff I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT, at the worst of all times…MERCURY IS RETROGRADE. Have I learned nothing? That time I bought the leather purse/backpack I don’t like, that vacation rental house I arranged, that appointment I had to cancel, the blow off from the friend, all retrograde periods…. Don’t buy things, don’t plan things, don’t sign contracts. That’s what those “wackos” into astrology say. And I believe them! Again. Now, pardon me while I reconstruct my email accounts, bookmarks, and install a few dozen programs.

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Posted in growth, venting

eating like a bird

Posted on February 24, 2007 by wendy| Comments Off

img_2240.jpgThis is as close as we get to eating like birds around here. See Mr. and Mrs. (I assume) Downy Woodpecker enjoying fresh suet from feeders made for them (note the special paddle shape for them to rest their tail while snacking). Notice she is on the lower, larger one. That’s the one with the new deluxe suet with dried bugs in it. Num num. Smart girl.

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Posted in animals, Bainbridge Island, WA, outside

breakfast of champions?

Posted on February 23, 2007 by wendy| 4 Comments

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Remember “Silly rabbit, Trix is for kids”? It’s a little different from when I was a kid. Fluorescent colors, new shapes. Top 3 ingredients: corn, sugar and corn syrup. I am thinking of conducting a “super-size me” type experiment to see if it ever decays. What do you think? A half life of, oh, 25 years? Maybe we could use it for art projects….

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Posted in food

Spinning the yarn

Posted on February 22, 2007 by wendy| 2 Comments

I have been knitting. And reknitting. After making scarves, I am once again attempting a hat for Kid. Hoping some “ownership” would keep this hat on her head, we went to the store together (which took bravery on my part since she peed on their floor last time–she was discrete, in the corner, but no one tells you about THESE potty training issues) and she selected the color she liked. A few rows into this new exercise, for some reason, I don’t know why, too much wine, not enough, anyway, I started thinking about a mysterious and heretofore untried thing called “gauge.” I picked up a book. I recalled the last hat. Kid not so gently pointed out the “size deficiency” of mommy’s first hat attempt.

So I make a swatch to measure my stitching. What a pain! Because I am knitting in the round, the book recommended cutting the edge string at each end to slide the swatch to the other end since I did not have the right length of circular cord, so I ended up with a Rastafarian-looking rectangle of yarn, only without the good drugs. Which I needed at this point.

But all of this, I imagine, is small potatoes compared to what you must do to knit a sweater for a dolphin. Have you heard of these women? They are protesting with knitting needles, but no one is getting the Goldie Hawn jab in Foul Play. In fact, I read they were “symbolically” knitting in protest. While I applaud their protest (especially the more I read about the traumatized dolphins previously used by the Navy) and I commented about the Navy’s proposal, how does symbolic knitting work? Are they really knitting, but it is symbolic of gathering us all together on an issue? Or is the knitting itself symbolic? I hope the knitting part is real. I’d like to see a sweater made for a dolphin. I wonder what the gauge looks like for that.

And, by the way, what about the sea lions proposed for this plan? Who is knitting for them? They won’t be cold in these waters but could still be traumatized, right? Rather than have a twitchy, nervous sea lion, I am afraid their version of trauma would entail morphing into the ocean version of Mad Max. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

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Posted in animals, knitting, regional