Moving forward, hopefully

-
Much better today. Houston, we have a brain. Last weekend Ben spent just about every waking moment working on the architectural plans for the new house while I imitated June Cleaver by doing laundry, grocery shopping and -- I cannot believe this -- baking cookies for the Election Day school bake sale. Apparently the wild yak has been fully domesticated. Anyway, we were inside the whole time so late Sunday afternoon we all went for a walk in the woods to have QUALITY FAMILY TIME, dammit, and we had a cool nature experience. As we approached our house at dusk, I heard “whoo hoo, whoo hoo” nearby. No, it was not Homer Simpson or some uncouth teen wolf-whistling at my hott bod. It was a great horned owl, I figured, though of course you couldn’t see it. But -- wrong! I looked up in the general direction of the hooting and there it was, a blob on the highest branch of a dead tree, moving now and then. Of course it took off as I was telling the others where it was, but I kept my eye on it, figured out which tree it landed on, and started looking, and I found it again. Ben ran into the house to get binoculars, but the kids saw it with the naked eye. I put the binoculars to my eyes when it was my turn, and holy birdshit, another owl flew into the picture and landed next to owl #1. The kids were quite excited, especially when I translated the owl-ese they were hearing: “I slept all day and just woke up, and I’m starving! I could use a nice juicy mouse right about now.” Then we went inside and Sarah raced upstairs for her kids’ bird identification book, and we saw what the owl would look like if we could see more than a dinky little silhouette. And through the magic of wireless laptop and Google image search, we quickly found a lot more pictures.

Tomorrow is a big day for two reasons -- we find out whether the Dems got control of the House or Senate as a result of today’s election, and we can go to the Leafy Suburb town hall and get the damn building permit for our house already. After all these months, some work on the site might actually start any day now. Stay tuned.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Entertainments II

-
1. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, which I'd never even heard of until a couple of years ago. Because of the title similarity, I guess I assumed it would be something like Cold Mountain, but actually it's more like Oscar Wilde meets Wuthering Heights. A phrase that sticks with me is the characterization of one of the characters as a "trying female." Such a useful description. 2. Jagged Little Pill , the Alanis Morissette album from several years ago that I recently rediscovered thanks to my iPod, which I've been listening to on my commute, since there's only so much NPR you can take at rush hour without getting bored and/or depressed. Lots of cool songs in addition to the familiar singles. That woman has a way with words. I can't help but wonder how many different men she's trashing, how people manage to careen from love to hate, and about the success of her future relationships given her apparently poor track record (and the potential intimidati
Read more

The rogue wave is coming

-
Ben and I saw " Poseidon " on Wednesday. To absolutely no one's surprise, I have lots of Deep Thoughts about the remake as well as comparisons to the original ("that's heavy, Robin"). I know it's retarded, but I took a pass on the scifi-fantasy Hobbit / Dungeons and Dragons nerdliness earlier in life, and I'm not a computer programmer, so I have the right to geek out about SOMETHING. Too bad I don't put this much effort into something else, like say learning an instrument, in which case I'd be appearing nightly at Carnegie Hall or at least Great Woods. But this is gonna take a while, so brace yourself for a future sea o' type. Elsewhere in the news, work has turned into a deluge as I crank out actual web pages, among other side projects that have suddenly cropped up. This three-day weekend will be a wonderful thing. And no 9:15 a.m. soccer tomorrow -- woo hoo! Ben personally accompanied the surveyor and held the sticks this morning at our
Read more

It's wicked hahd

-
I had to write in support of Heather, author of my favorite blog, dooce.com. In her latest entry , she notes that she's usually stressed but more or less OK until she sees a TV show about people who are cheerfully and serenely raising sextuplets, which makes her feel totally inadequate that she can barely deal with her one toddler. Well... you go, girl. I think all of us parents feel like we're falling pretty far short of the mark in most ways. For myself, it's little things like working full-time, seeing them for a few semi-meaningful minutes each weekday in rushed mornings and cranky evenings (minus the time I tell them to go play so I can get reacquainted with Ben for a moment or two). It's the knowledge that I'm ruining their psyches by incessantly screaming at them, even though I know at some level that other parents probably just might raise their voices at their kids in the privacy of their own homes, as opposed to when I'm around, when the kids are model
Read more