Blog Archives

Bird Sniffing

6/29/2017

For mommy, it’s the most not-wonderful time of the year. Two June deadlines at work means it’s a hectic month, and the big one is June 30. She comes home so tired every day, and that’s when our job starts. We parrots are helpful companions to relieve stress. We can listen to her babble about her day, and let her pet our feathers. She especially likes to stick her nose in our necks. She calls that “bird sniffing” and claims it has magic powers to make everything better.

I don’t know about that, but whatever makes her feel better. We can always fluff them back into place.

What I don’t understand is why everybody waits until the last minute to do things. What’s up with that? Why do humans procrastinate, then want everybody to get upset and frantic with them? That’s like flock behavior, except we don’t have deadlines – we just do what we do. If there’s panic, we don’t wait; we freak out right away. It gets dealt with. That’s it. You fight or fly, and go back to being a pretty bird. If only it were that simple for humans. You certainly do have a way of complicating things.

Oh well, I’m a helpful hen and here for mommy. I hope you’re all doing well. Love and prayers to all of you. Take care. Have a Happy Friday tomorrow and a wonderful weekend,

Luv,

Chloe

A Battle Won

6/22/2017

We’ve had a battle on our hands this week, but we won. You probably saw the shenanagins in our attempts to watch the season finale of Better Call Saul this week. I’m happy to report that the battle is won. We not only saw it, but we own the episode now! Here’s what happened.

Our parronts don’t have cable or satellite service at home. There’s only one cable provider in our area, and they take full advantage of being a monopoly by charging outrageous fees. Satellite isn’t much better – there are two providers in our area. We had Uverse, but they’re also outrageously expensive and merged with one of the satellite providers, who informed the parronts that we can’t get service any more because there are too many trees around. Well duh, we live in the woods. One day, one of daddy’s friends told him about SlingTV, which is a $20/month service you can get through Roku with 20 channels, and extra packages to add sports or movies. They looked into it, and realized that they could watch everything they wanted to watch this way, so they cut the wire and said to hell with paid TV service. And it’s been working great, for nearly 2 years. Until Tuesday.

The problem: Better Call Saul comes on at 10 p.m. our time. Unfortunately, that’s our bedtime. Daddy has to be to work at 7:30, so staying up to watch it was out of the question if he and mommy wanted to be a pleasant little drone at work on Tuesday. SlingTV usually has episodes of their programs available for streaming the next morning, so we’ve been catching the episodes on Tuesdays. It’s worked great. Until this past Tuesday, when we settled in with our PJ’s and popcorn all ready and – bumpkus. No Episode 10. What?

Mommy’s working on a novel and daddy’s been watching another show on Netflix, so they decided to be patient and wait. We do our PJ/popcorn routine again yesterday and – still nothing. Hmm. It was at this point that mommy realized that she has about $30 through iTunes in gift cards and some sort of settlement with iBooks that she never spent. No problem, she said. I’ll use my credit to buy the episode, and we’ll watch it on the Apple TV. So she bought it. Which was good, but we forgot one important thing: Apple doesn’t stream, it downloads to your device, and the entire episode had to download. By this time, mommy was slipping a word with asterisks, while daddy checked our download speed and noticed that it was running slower than usual last night. Go figure. By ten o’clock, we had about half of the episode downloaded, so they just left the download to finish and said we’ll watch it tonight.

Mommy said it was ridiculous to have this much resistance to watching one episode of one TV show. And she’s right. She did contact Sling TV, and they informed her that it could take up to 72 hours for new episodes to be available for streaming. That’s 3 days! This is the first time they’ve ever exercised that option. Who knows why, with everybody talking about it online. You’d think they’d be motivated to have a season finale out there fast, but it just showed up today.

So it’s been a battle, but the battle is won and we finally saw it. Man, Chuck went nuttier than Chinese chicken salad, didn't he? He really thought he had one over on Howard and HHM, but when Howard took matters in his own hands to get it settled in an unexpected way, Chuck cracked. It was only a matter of time, but being a lawyer meant everything to Chuck and when that was lost, he was lost. And all the while, Jimmy's rising to try and be a better person. He even picked up Kim's papers (aww!) and gave up the sweet Sandpiper deal so that lady wouldn't lose her friends. Very interesting reversal of roles - or were they reversed? Mommy always said Chuck had more wicked in him than Jimmy.

Anyway, we're glad to see that amazing episode, even though it was tougher than it had to be. Life's like that sometimes. You all take care. Have a happy Friday tomorrow and a wonderful weekend.

Luv,

Zack

Happy Birthday Bubbles!

6/16/2017

Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday dear Bubbles!
Happy birthday to you!
And many more!
We want you to have many more!

Happy birthday/gotcha day Bubbles! A year ago, daddy brought home our blue beauty sister, and what a joy she's been. We love our Quaker Cutie. Bubbles celebrates a year with us and "officially" turning 3 years old today.

Have a great day, Bubbs!

Love,

Daddy, mommy, Zack & Chloe.

Summertime!

6/8/2017

Summertime means a change to daddy’s work schedule. He gets Friday’s off, but he has to work long days the rest of the week. We don’t like that, and have been protesting this longer work day with plenty of screams, floor pooping, pouting, and occasional clinginess and shirt chewing. Birds like routine, and we have to keep our humans thinking!

As if they don’t have plenty to think about already. They’re still working on building that back deck. It’s coming along and they pray/hope to finish it this weekend. I sure hope they do. In the weeks since they returned to this project, the weather has been doing this crazy thing about being milder during the week, then soaring back up into the 90’s when Saturday rolls around and they can finally get out there and do a lot of work. As they put it, they’ve had it with that crap, but it’s so close to done that they want to finish it. Hopefully, that will happen soon. They had originally planned to do the other half of the work in the fall, but decided it would be best to just finish it now, while they remember how they did that first half, and especially what materials they used and where they found them. Plus, it’s not likelier to be any cooler in September than it is now. Fall around here hits for 2 weeks in late October, and then suddenly it’s cool and the days are shorter.

Mommy is also writing another novel. People say it’s a hell of a time for that, between this being her busiest time of year at work and this deck project, but she says to hell with circumstances dictating her life. I can’t blame her. It’s best to write when the muse strikes, and something about being busy seems to fire up her imagination. It could be that increased cardio exercise the doctor told her to do, too. But honestly, I think frustration over work did the most to spur this. Her muse fires up when something’s pissed her off, and that certainly happened a few weeks ago. That’s also about the time that the ideas for this novel really started coming. Writing is a coping mechanism for her, and that’s probably the best way for her to deal. We don’t need her causing mischief. But no matter the reasons, the results are the same: she’s happy when she’s writing, and she deals with the rest of life better.

And finally, the bird nest on the front door wreath is gone. The last sighting of those birds was last Friday, and the parronts noticed that the nest was tipping out of the wreath and was fixing to fall out, so they cleaned it up. So much for our squatters, but that really wasn’t a good place for a nest anyway. It was destined to fail. What I don’t understand is why they built there when there are acres of woods with numerous trees out there to build in. Wildlife, hmm. Go figure.

So that’s our weekly update. I hope you’re doing well and enjoying summer. We’re getting in the swing of things here, and are gearing up for a good one. Don’t forget too, Bubbles birthday is June 16. I’ll post more reminders on Twitter, but just a heads up that we have another birthday coming up. Fun! She'll be 3, but it will be her first "gotcha day" with our flock. A year with Bubbles, and she's a joy! We look forward to her being part of our spunky bunch forever!

That’s all today. Take care. Have a Happy Friday tomorrow and a wonderful weekend.

Luv,

Chloe

Squatters

6/1/2017

Another lesson about the circle of life while living in the woods: sometimes, the wildlife can't tell fake plants from real ones. It's not something that happens a lot, but every now and then, the outside critters can't tell nature from craft shop creation. We've got hit with such ignorance today when mommy went to take the leftovers from supper out for the feral critters, and informed us that birds have built a nest in the front door wreath.

No joke: all three of us said "what?" at the same time.

It's true. There's a bird nest squashed between mommy's nice magnolia wreath and the door. All of those birdhouses in the front yard, and they decide that our "casa" is their "casa," literally! And those squatters aren't paying me any rent, either.

We aren't sure what kind of birds they are, but they have to be small: perhaps thrashers or wrens. We don't really know what to do about it either. Mommy hates to bother them, especially if they have eggs - but that nest will likely fall in the next big wind or thunderstorm. And it is, after all, the front door. The parronts tend to use it.

The person who made that wreath at the craft store must be really good, because they couldn't tell it fabric from real branches, leaves, and flowers. And those outside birds must really like us, or perhaps envy the three of us living in the house. That's about as close as they can get to it!

That's all today. Take care. Have a Happy Friday tomorrow and a wonderful weekend.

Luv,

Zack

Bird Sniffing

A Battle Won

Happy Birthday Bubbles!

Summertime!

Squatters

Niblets

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