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Passing on our crazy obsession with birds
This post is for Toby. He has been asking me twice a day if I wrote it yet. So now I feel extremely bad that I don’t have all that much to write about. But if you look through my flickr set, you’ll see that I did make quite an effort to try to be more funny with my titles and descriptions. Being funny is hard work. It’s a good thing I can draw because I suck at the funny blogging gig.
We went to the Magnolia Bird Farm on Saturday. It was a case of me begging Toby, “Please please take us somewhere. We are so very bored of this house and I can’t think of any adventures that don’t involve the mall and shopping.” I didn’t actually beg but I think Toby could hear me through my desperate looking eyes. I take Baby Bug all over the place but sometimes, I just need to get out with another adult.
The Bird Farm was a total hoot with Baby Bug. Last time we took her she was too little and didn’t really care much. This time it was like what taking her to the zoo should have been. She loved looking at all the birds. (At least they were awake, unlike all the animals at the Zoo). We explored for hours. I’m sure a lot of that exploring was her exploring the poop encrustment on the cages but I can’t do anything about that. Let’s just hope none of us come down with any bird flu viruses.
The actual reason we went to The Bird Farm was to trade in two of our very very noisy finches. Sadly, we had to let Mel go. We’ve had him for ages but he was way too noisy. I love that bird but he had to go. I kind of feel bad that I didn’t give him a proper goodbye but I think finches only have a three second memory so he probably forgave me. He’s probably thinking, “Hot Dog! Look at all the hot women in here!”
I got Mel way back in the beginning to be a friend to Bridgeet, my first finch. Bridgeet was a female zebra finch. All white and cute as a button. A woman at work gave her to me because she had to get rid of her because she was too noisy. (Bridgeet, not the woman at work). Little did I know, that little white bird was the beginning of our crazy bird hobby. Toby’s always loved birds but getting a finch was permission to take his bird watching hobby to a whole new level.
Then we built the bird aviary. Hmmmmm… I have pictures of it somewhere. Probably in my old archives that are GONE. Too bad because our aviary is really cool. If Toby’s office wasn’t always such a mess (and I didn’t have this aversion to showing off messes), I’d go take a picture of it. It’s huge and in our house. Just like a Zoo! In our house!
We are the crazy bird people!
Shortly after acquiring Bridgeet (and then Mel to keep her company) we started collecting more and more finches. (They are like candy except you can’t eat them and they tweet!) We had spice finches for a while but they kept having babies and that got out of control. So over the years, we’ve narrowed our collection down to mostly just waxbills. This is probably boring to 99 percent of the people who might read this but there’s going to be one person who knows exactly what a waxbill is and this paragraph is ALL FOR YOU!
Bridgeet died a while back (she was old) and ever since, Mel has been a screeching lunatic bird. It could be because he misses Bridgeet or it could be because he just is a crazy lunatic bird. The bird aviary is in Toby’s office and in order to work, and get stuff done, Toby has resorted to squirting Mel with a squirt bottle full of water to get him to shut up. It’s really sad. Mel has had more than his fair share of baths.
The rest of the birds have suffered too because when Mel gets squirted, he sends the whole aviary into a tither. It was time for him to go. We didn’t want to do it because who knows if somebody will buy him and put him in a very very small cage in a dark dorm room or something, but he had to go. Hopefully, he’ll get to live out the rest of his days at the bird farm with a zillion new hot girlfriends.
So this is my goodbye post to Mel. And also a post about how we hope to pass on our love of birds to Baby Bug, so people can make fun of her too.
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All’s fun and games until somebody poops in the pool
It has been Hot! Hot! Hot! here. Hotter than dog’s breath, as I like to say. It really feels like dog’s breath too because it is so humid all the time. When I was out in the sticks it was about 109, sometimes 115 but it seemed way more bearable than the 93 degrees in the shade of my hot humid house with no air conditioning.
I would kill for some air conditioning. I try and try to imagine that I am in Paris or that I am the sexy señorita slaving away in the kitchen while sweat drips down the tendrils of my curly hair slipping out of it’s romantically loose bun BUT my imagination is in need of some anti-freeze or something because it just poops out and starts panting.
How do I always forget that summer is like this? I used to say that summer was my favorite time of year but this year… I’m thinking I’m way more into Fall. Fall with it’s pumpkin pies and crisp apples. Give me your tweeds and wool sweaters. I think I should move to Sweden.
Anyway! This post is not about me belly aching about the heat. It is about our NEW NEATO FEATO DEETO BLOWUP KIDDIE POOL! Yes, I wheeled the stroller down the hot-enough-to-fry-an-egg-on sidewalk this morning, to our local hardware store and bought an eight dollar blow up pool! I think it is one of the best investments I have ever made.
Baby Bug and I nearly died of heat stroke getting it at 9:30 this morning but it was so worth it. When we got home, Baby Bug took a nap and I begged Toby to blow it up for us. I tried to blow it up myself but I almost passed out. I have the lung capacity of a mouse. I saw stars and everything.
It took Toby quite a lot of trickery to get it blown up too. Who knew you need a bike pump for these things? We don’t have a bike pump. But we do have a bugaboo stroller with a handy dandy mini pump for pumping up bugaboo tires. It wasn’t a good fit but with sharp knife (for reasons I’m not sure of) Toby managed to get the silly thing blown up just in time for Baby Bug to wake up.
I take that back. He managed to get it blown up while she ate lunch in her high chair. You should have seen her excitement as the pump made it’s whoosh whoosh whoosh sound. I’m sure she had no idea what this giant blue and red plastic expanding thing was but she knew it had something to do with Fun with a capital “F”. Whoosh Whoosh Whoosh went the pump. Swing swing swing went Baby Bug’s dangling legs under her high chair. She could barely eat she was so excited.
Finally, we got the thing blown up and out on the porch to fill with water. It was so great. Playing with water is always fun with a baby but playing with water in a kiddie pool on a super super super hot day is even better! I think the only thing that might have topped it (thinking of you Laurie) would have been eating popsicles while playing in the neato feato deeto kiddie pool with a baby on a super super super hot day.
We had a blast. The best part for me is that this little body of water somehow made the temperature on our patio drop a good ten degrees. I can’t say for sure since we have no thermometer but it sure felt like it. It’s amazing how much cooler you can feel when you have your feet submerged in cold water. Bad mood heat stroke instantly gone.
And then Baby Bug had to go and poop in the pool. Yeah. You knew that was coming. She wore her diaper and bathing suit for a good hour but then the diaper became the GIANT ABSORBING DIAPER and swelled up bigger than her. She looked like a queen bee with a giant abdomen.
I changed her out of the GIANT DIAPER and into a swim diaper and that worked for about three minutes until she decided she wanted to run in and out of the house and sit on the couch and leave giant wet butt prints all over the place. So we ended up taking the swim diaper off and just standing around asking each other what we should do. Get her dressed? Block off the patio and keep her from playing in the pool? Put her in another swim diaper? What to do… what to do!
While Toby and I stood around like clueless parents, it suddenly got very quiet and next thing we knew there was a silent toddler squatting in her new kiddie pool taking a poop as if it was her own private toilet. Nothing good ever comes from a silent toddler. And poop, ugh poop. I am quickly becoming immune to the horror of poop.
I scooped the poop out with a plastic bag and Toby dumped the contaminated water over the side of our patio into our neighbor’s garden below. We made jokes about the five second rule and the fact that our pooped in pool water is probably a hundred times cleaner than the beaches in Huntington. But the sad fact was, our super duper neato feato deeto kiddie pool fun was officially over.
Until tomorrow or something.
