We have a house guest. I wonder if his mother wants him back yet.

Well, he more or less stays on the back porch, but it would appear that “Piney” is with us for a while.  I suggested we should call him “Plop,” for that is probably the sound he made when his mother tossed him out of the nest.  But, I suppose Piney will work since it was, in fact, a pine tree that he fell (was thrown) from. 

Piney fell into our lives one week ago today.  We estimate that he was only 3 to 5 days old when his mother decided that she didn’t want him any more.  I walk by the tree several times a day and hear his brothers and sisters calling for him, but he seems content in his blue bucket with towels for a nest. 

I generally discourage bringing wild animals into my home, but with two kids who seem to have inherited their mother’s genes with regard to little wayward creatures, mine was a losing battle.  Thus far our little Robin has subsisted wholy on mushy dog food, with the occasional worm thrown in for an extra smattering of protein now and then.  I seriously doubted that Piney would make it through his first night, but I was wrong.  Some eight days later, he is going strong.  So strong in fact, yesterday while we were eatting dinner (waffles, yum!) out on the porch, Piney promptly jumped/flew up to the rim of his blue plastic nest and began chirping at us.  It was rather demanding chirpping, I must say.  Kind of like: “enough dog food, bring me a waffle”

I am amazed at his development.  He began removing his baby feathers and now new traditional feathers are growing in.   He has his care takers well trained.  He begins to chirp and make other bird noises and someone finds the tweezers and dog food and begins stuffing his little beak.  He immediately takes a dump and someone gets him a fresh towel.  When he squaks a different way, he will gladly interact wtih you by standing on your finger and stretching out his wings or peeping at you.  They tell me he likes to have his back scratched. 

Yesterday, Piney seemed to have overstayed his welcome.  The kids were just in bed when I could hear him making all kinds of noise on the back porch.  When I approached the glass door and turned on the light I watched him peck at the glass with his beak and then chirp.  This went on for several minutes until Sharon put him in a 5-gallon bucket.   I think the little sucker actually wanted to come in the house. 

This morning, he actually got out of the big bucket.  Can anyone say bird cage?    I wonder if his mother would like him back now  I will say that this has been a good lesson in nature and biology.  And I did actually feed him one time.  I am not completely heartless.  If I just climed the tree and put him back in the nest, do you think his mother would keep him? 

I’ll post some pictures later.

 

My Cubicle Is Making Me Insane

 It became obnoxiously obvious to me today that my cubicle is making me insane.  As I sit here I count not one but four half empty (or full, depending on your perspective on life these days) cups of tea.  Today is Thursday, which means that by some stroke of pure laziness, I haven’t taken three of the half full cups to the garbage yet.  Maybe I should start building some kind of tower of foam tea cups in my spare time. 

 

In all truth I think I am keeping the cups because they don’t deserve to be thrown out.  You should see these suckers.  Somewhere between crimson and maroon with a hint of saddle brown.  They have little steaming pictures of themselves in various settings.  (My favorite setting is the two steaming cups on a table separated by a single rose, as if they are having some kind of secret affair).  Written all over the cup in various fonts and sizes are the words “Cappuccino,” “Latte,” “Espresso,” and the like.  Simply holding the cup in my hand makes me feel more Italian every morning.  I’ve actually considered getting rid of all the coffee mugs at my house and just using these.  Of course I would have to steal them from here, which would bring on a whole other world of trouble.    These cups arrived with the “lid policy” big brother has implemented here in the office building.   You see, to avoid spills on the carpet, some knuckle head with a corner office, and a lot of zeros in his salary decided that all of the cube-dwelling peons (which should be spelled “pee on” as far as I’m concerned) should drink out of sippie cups.  I get to feel like a toddler every day.  Apparently, the thought process is that we can’t possibly be trusted to walk and talk and carry a beverage of some kind without spilling.  Given the current state of the carpet in the building, I don’t think the lid policy is working.

 

If two paragraphs about a poly-styrene cup didn’t give you the sense that I am going crazy, there’s more.  I opened up my lunch cooler for a snack at 8AM.  The Cheetos were on top of everything else.  A little zip-lock bag of crunchy, orange goodness right there next to the coffee cake that my wife so lovingly baked yesterday.  I actually had a debate with myself about why I shouldn’t eat the Cheetos at 8AM.  In fact, I pulled them both out and just starred at them for about five minutes, weighing the pro’s and con’s about each.  About 5:30 into the conversation with myself, I had finally resolved to eat the coffee cake and save the Cheetos until around 10AM or so.  It was then that I got a spam email from DishNetwork followed immediately by one about male enhancement.  I’m not sure how these continue to get through, but I have completely forgotten about the great Cheeto debate in lieu of wondering if I can install the dish myself and save any money. 

 

I pick up my tea to wash down some of the almondy goodness only to find out the downside of collecting crimson and maroon cups.  It turns out if you are distracted by work or something on the internet, you will naturally reach for the nearest cup, regardless of the fact that it has four day-old tea with little floaties in it.  I am really hoping that what ever I swallowed won’t cause me any intestinal trouble until I get home.  Lord knows I don’t want to use the men’s room here for any serious business.  Especially not the kind of business that might mean I have to frantically run past most of the other peon’s, thereby giving them something else to talk about. 

 

Moving on, the fluorescent tube in the light directly over my ‘work-station’ is out.  I am wholly convinced that this is part of some larger plot to either make me crazy(er) or make me quit.  Either way, I suppose they get what they want. 

 

They tell me I am supposed to lock every cabinet and drawer in this little box every night before I leave.  I usually don’t because I figure if the cleaning lady wants to steal some stack of papers from some file in some drawer in some guy’s cube, she’s crazier than I am and deserves whatever reward she gets from having sticky fingers.  As long as she empties the trash and cleans up some of the crumbs from the almond coffee cake, I don’t care.  The best defense I see for preventing the cleaning lady from stealing some stack of papers from some file in some drawer in some guy’s cube is to make sure that the garbage can is accessible, so I pull it out for her before I leave.  It takes a lot less time than fumbling through a bunch of keys and systematically locking everything up.  It also saves me time in the morning.  I just shove the can under the desk and turn on the computer.  

 

Occasionally I find myself staring at the sticker on my keyboard tray that reads: KEYBOARD MECHANISM Intended for Keyboard Weight ONLY.  I’m not kidding.  That’s exactly how it reads.  Not only do I sit here and try to figure out why they wrote it that way, I try to come up with a list of all the things people might actually try to put on the KEYBOARD MECHANISM that would void the warranty or cause some kind of irreparable body harm.  Do people use these things as steps to get on their desk to change the fluorescent light tubes?  Does the cleaning lady stand on them to reach the top of the cabinets to dust?  (Based on the dust on top of my cabinets, that’s not happening)  Can they double as a second chair so I can have a conference call in my cubicle?  Someone help me out here! 

 

The sure way to know that I am going crazy is that I have now taken 30 minutes to write this all in an attempt to avoid actual work.  I suppose I will go get another cup for the tower and then see what’s new on the internet.   

 

A rude awakening

This falls into the category of: what they don’t tell you in parenting class.

It’s 12:34AM.  The first cry from Cassidy’s room is alarming, mostly because it’s different than the usual midnight call for a drink of water or sore legs.  My wife is already leaving the bed (how does she get up so fast without falling on her face in the darkened room?)  The second cry is much louder and more distressed than the first.  Clearly the little one is out of bed.  (This is alarming because Cass never gets out of bed.  She could have grown a second set of arms and legs during the night but would patiently wait for one of us to actually enter her room so as to witness, first hand, her new found appendages.) So, like I said, she was out of bed.  Then it hits me: She’s throwing up!

 Before I get much further you should know that there is a long standing rule passed down from parent to child in our family for countless generations.  I am sure on some boat on the way over from Holland a great, great, great relative told the great, great relative something like this:  If you are going to throw up, stay in bed and call for me.  What ever you do, don’t get out of bed!  Keeping with tradition, I have passed this maxim on to my offspring.  In theory, this should work.  The now free stomach contents are relatively contained to the bedding, which can be washed (or burned) as appropriate.  The carpet, walls, tile, walls, toilet, walls, cabinets, and walls, remain vomit free.  Did I mention the walls?  It’s foolproof. 

Here’s the problem: if you’ve never really thrown up the entire contents of your stomach with the force of a volcano, you probably don’t know what it feels like.  If you don’t know it’s coming, you’ll probably be a little freaked out by the strange feeling brewing in your gut.  When you are four, and your guts are in turmoil, you go looking for help.  You don’t stay in bed. 

By the time my wife got to my daughter and scooped her up in her arms, wave two of Mt. St. Helen’s erupted from Cassidy’s stomach all over Sharon.  Wave three proceeded to follow wave two, and found its resting place all over the bathroom.  In an attempt to dodge the disaster that was the bathroom, I entered the poor little kid’s bed room and found my own disaster.  Did I mention that she is four? And little?  How can one little kid puke this much?  It’s not right.  Why didn’t she stay in bed?  Oh yeah, I covered that a while ago.  

In an attempt to make a long story short, the wash machine was running by 12:50 and the rug scrubber was running by 1:00AM.  Cassidy was in the tub asking how we were going to get everything cleaned up and generally feeling rather bad about the turn of events (bless her heart).  Cassidy was back in bed by 1:30, I found myself horrizontal a few minutes later and Sharon managed to return to her pillow by 2AM, freshly showered. 

Sharon discussed the staying in bed thing with Cassidy again.  I think she understands now.  By some miracle, she awoke this morning and said she felt fine.   My eyes feel like sand paper and the coffee isn’t working.  It’s stories like this that make me understand why I titled our blog From Chaos to Calm.  Granted, this happened in the reverse, but this just seems like the way it goes.  Like flipping a switch.