7 Quick Takes - Wildlife Edition

1.  Birds in Garage

Two birds have flown into the garage this week, just moments after I've opened the door.  They were both nut-hatches or creepers (maybe it was the same stupid bird) and both flew out after lots of frantic flying after I opened the second door. S was terrified.

2. Nesting Bluejay

A bluejay is nesting in a tree outside our front window, in a nest easily seen from the couch, so I watch it a lot.  I'm not sure whether both bluejay parents are involved or just the mother, but feeding those babies is clearly a lot of work.  The mother bluejay comes back to the nest every 10 minutes or so, lands on a faraway branch, looks around and then hops to a closer branch, looks again, and then moves.  She goes through this maybe ten times before landing on her nest and feeding her babies, which I think are almost ready to fledge.  When I walk in our front garden, she hops from tree to tree scolding me but never getting near her nest.  I bought her some peanuts in the shell this week and set them out on on patio railing.  A pound of peanuts was gone in a few hours, and I never saw any of them leaving, but there are some shells under her tree so I'm sure she got a few.  There are a lot of bluejays here.

3. Bird hit by car

This morning as we were leaving I saw a common grackle parent and one of its babies in the middle of the road. When I came back the baby was there but not the parent.  I decided to intervene and picked the baby up and moved it to a flower bed in our garden.  It was surprisingly heavy and strong.  I saw the parent feeding it there and thought all was well.  It is common for birds about to fledge to spending a few days on the ground.  It's also a myth that a parent won't return if you touch the baby.  They don't have much in the way of a sense of smell.  Unfortunately, about an hour after I moved the baby, it was back in the road and not long after that I saw it get run over by one of our neighbors.  The parents spend most of the morning looking for this baby and not finding it.  I wondered if it would have been run over if I hadn't intervened and I felt terrible.  I was happy to see the same parents with three other fledglings a little later, even though they were all in the road.  The parents were taking turning leaving to find food, with one of them staying with their brood at all times.  They've gone somewhere else now, hopefully safe and well.  There are a lot of outdoor cats in our neighborhood unfortunately, and they're devastating for birds.

4. Rabbits

Jack spent most of Monday watching the garden from a basement window that is at ground level.  In the afternoon I was doing some yardwork outside this window and frightened a baby rabbit that had been hiding in the hostas.  No wonder Jack was so focused.

5. Turtles

We've been enjoying the gigantic snapping turtles and painted turtles at the duck pond near our house.  Also the geese and their goslings.

6. Spider

The nature highlight of the week. Yesterday we were at the swimming pool for the first time this season.  S was swimming and I was watching.  As I sat, I noticed an elegant black spider make it's way to a puddle, drink a little water and then head over for my chair.   I thought it looked like a black widow, but since they don't live here (ha!) I dismissed that idea.  It had a small red stripe on its back.  The spider started to climb my chair, and I got a glimpse of its underside, where I could clearly see the classic red hourglass.  It was a black widow!!  After a lot of research, I'm convinced that they are a small threat, and even if I did get bitten by one, I'd be okay, but still!  They usually are nocturnal and hide during the day.  This one was probably disturbed by something that made it walk out over the hot concrete by the pool.

7.  I think black widow might trump giant centipede, but maybe not.

Swimming and spiders

The pool opened today! As I was sitting and S. was swimming in the kiddie pool, I noticed a big black spider, which went to a puddle to drink, and then started to climb up my chair.  I got up, since I'm no fan of spiders climbing on my legs.  Since it was shiny and black, I casually wondered if it was a black widow, but since I thought that they don't live in Blacksburg, I decided it was some other spider, despite the red stripe on its back.  Then, as it climbed, I caught a glimpse of the beautiful red hourglass on its abdomen, and realized that it was in fact a black widow.  I spent the rest of our pool time making sure it didn't move, and I'll probably spend the rest of my life standing while I'm outdoors.  I probably should have stomped on it, but I'm a coward with spiders.  Fortunately, the black widow is non-aggressive and rarely bites.  There are only about 2500 bites per year in the US despite the spider being very common.  It was very rare so see a widow spider casually walking around the pool deck in the sun.  They generally prefer to hide in low-lying cluttered spaces.  Still, ick.

Misheard

Me, explaining for some reason:  Me and daddy are married.  Daddy is my husband.

Sofia: Daddy is your husband.

(later, to a stranger)

Sofia:  My daddy is my mommy's cousin! 

Oops.

Creation Story

We were looking at the world map in Sofia's room, so that I could explain again where we live and where Nonna lives, when Sofia told me the story of how she became my baby.

"I used to live here (points at northern Greenland) where it is very cold.  One day I was crawling and I slipped on the ice and I was crying a lot and then you came and picked me up and then I wasn't crying anymore.  And then we went together on the big airplane to here (Canada) and then you took me home with you and I was your baby."

Quick Takes

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

I've been trying to live each day more consciously, as I mentioned in a previous post, by doing what I ought, and then what I want, rather than just coasting through the day.  We have all been sick this week, especially Sofia, and living with conscientiousness hasn't been particularly easy, but I think I have had enough small successes to write some quick takes this week.

1.  As the title of this blog says, if you want to be happy, be.  I used to think that there are some people who are naturally happy or productive or whatever you will.  I'm sure that one's natural tendencies are part of it, but I'm realizing more and more that if I want to be happy, I have to make that choice each day.  I usually wake up feeling tired and sore, and if I followed my inclinations, I'd spend the whole day on the couch.  I have been trying for several weeks to follow a sort of routine, where I bring Sofia to school, then come home and run a mile, then do whatever cleaning needs to be done, then cook my lunch and our dinners, and then write/sew/read until it's time to go back to the school.  Then in the afternoon I do errands, and go to the park or library, play with Sofia at home.  This week has been nothing but interruptions though, with a sick Sofia at home all week.  I still tried to follow a routine, but I was sick too, and we just spent a lot of time reading books and lying down.

2. Music makes a big difference.  I need to make more mix CDs to play in the car.  I love listening to this:



Someone needs to listen to this beautiful music.  God knows the music at our the church here in Blacksburg could use some improvement.  We sing Be Not Afraid every Sunday.  I really, really miss my old church.  Also incense. 

3. If I make a plan for the day, I accomplish much more than I could ever have imagined, even if I'm tired or not feeling well.  If I don't have a plan, I accomplish exactly nothing.

4.  I am reading a biography of Catherine the Great by Robert Massie.  My mom recommended it, and while I was trying to look at books while Sofia was successfully playing hide-and-seek at the library, I happened to see it and grabbed it so I could stop looking for a book and go find her.  It's been very interesting, especially for a russo-phile like me.  I have always meant to write a series with quotes from historical literature that violate my cultural expectations for the time period, such as Anna Karenina's use of birth control.  This book has lots of that, and is actually historical rather than literary.   Did you know that Catherine's predecessor, Elizabeth, never married but had dozens of lovers?  Or that Peter the Great married a Lithuanian peasant?  Or that Catherine's three children were fathered by three different men, none of them her husband?  There is much more in this book of course, but bits like that always surprise me.

5.  More about this book.  Imagine being 14 years old, about to be engaged to a stranger, spending a month traveling my coach and sleigh to a foreign land, marrying the stranger a few months later, and never seeing another family member again.  Or, imagine being a Russian sailor, spending 6 months sailing to the Mediterranean to fight the Turkish fleet.  Or being part of a revolution to depose the current Autocrat and replace him with his estranged wife.  I read things like this and realize that life just isn't as exciting as it used to be.   I'm sure for most people in 1700's Russia, life wasn't like this either, but for some people it was.  Who has such an exciting life now?  Almost no one.

6.  I also got The World Until Yesterday from the library.  Can't wait to read it.

7.  Time to go live consciously, by making three meals to freeze, starting the training for my new maybe-job, and cleaning.  School was cancelled today for about an inch of snow.  Having lived in New York, Chicago and Wisconsin, all I have to say is, pathetic.

My focus for lent

“As the uneasiness and reluctance to face it cut him off more and more from all real happiness, and as habit renders the pleasures the vanity and excitement and flippancy at once less pleasant and harder to forgo...you will find that anything or nothing is sufficient to attract his wandering attention. You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday's paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes, but also in conversations with those he cares nothing about, on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say...'I now see that I spent most my life doing in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Do what I ought, and then what I like.  There are specifics of course, but that is the general idea.

Something I needed to read

Our memories are our own and we cannot blame anything or anyone in the pastfor any pain dwelling there. If we open the door to them or keep hashing overpast incidents in our minds, we have only ourselves to blame.

h/t  Abigail's Alcove

Jose Mujica

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/05/world/americas/after-years-in-solitary-an-austere-life-as-uruguays-president.html?hp&_r=0&gwh=4AC753264ACFFBD1B80FE7A672C33661

NY Times on Beate Gordon

Quick Takes - The best things I read this year

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

(from all sources)

Many times throughout the year I found myself reading exactly what I needed to read.  Since these quick takes are from memory, and I never make a record of what I've read (unfortunately), a lot of great stuff will be missing.

1. Italian Shoes, by Henning Mankell

I found this through a recommendation from The Wine Dark Sea.  It is the story of a man who made a major mistake, and fled from the world as a result.  He is unexpectedly forced to face his past and begins to come back to life as a result.  I just loved it, and have thought about it a lot since I read it in the early spring.

2. The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingslover

I re-read this novel a few months ago and loved it even more that I did the first time I read it.  It is interesting on many levels.  There are the stories of the father's destruction, the family's destruction, and the destruction of the Congo.  The insight into Congolese life, language and history are fascinating.

3. Calah's post "Fear, Prayer"

and all of the discussion it spawned in the Catholic blogosphere.  I also found this more recent article (in anticipation of a book about hunter-gatherer child-rearing practices) relevant to the discussion.   I found myself wishing that all the houses on my street lacked some necessary feature, like a stove, so that everyone would have to go and use the communal stoves and we would all have to meet each other semi-regularly.  If only.

4. What my son's disabilities taught me about having it all, by Marie Myung-Ok Lee

Written in response to Anne-Marie Slaughter's widely-read article in The Atlantic, a mother explains why she is happy with her imperfect life.  Really the best thing on this list.

5.  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, by Steig Larsson

What can I say?  I just loved Lisbeth Salander.

6. This totally inappropriate website.

7.  Simcha Fisher - To the Mother With Only One Child