Sunday Sunlight Plus a UFO

I think I got a picture of a Fairy! See the little bright green UFO in the lower left quadrant of the photo? Or, maybe it's a very tiny spaceship from a very tiny planet, as yet undiscovered because it's...well, so very tiny. 

But this is what my husband said when I showed him this photo.  "It's one of those little green bugs that got too close to the lens."  Me: "No way!  If it's one of those bugs, why is it going so fast and in two different directions?"
Husband, in a completely flat, no nonsense tone: "It drank too much coffee at Starbucks."

Surprise!

Monday, September 28, '09 My husband brought these home for me today.

I love the color, so perfect for Autumn. And I like the little pottery vase they're sitting in. Now the only question is...

When is he going to tell me what he's feeling guilty about? ;-)

Yawn

That's all I'm doing...yawning. I'd really like to go to sleep, but for some reason, sleep is avoiding me tonight. It's 1:00 a.m. here in California, and I've been up since 6 a.m., I had a busy day, so where's the sandman? I'd like to go for a walk but the moon isn't anywhere near full. I can't even see a tiny little sliver of her. And while the stars are huge and bright, they're not bright enough to light my way through the forest.

The last time I felt like this I took a flashlight, roused my dogs and went ahead and went for a walk, staying on the path...and I stepped right into a big pile of bear poop. At first, I was just extremely annoyed because I thought it was dog poop. Then I noticed the way my dogs were acting and I took a closer look and saw the seeds and other things that identified it as bear scat. We don't have Grizzlies here (THANK GOD!!) but our little black bears can be testy sometimes. Especially, I suppose, if some idiot woman were to run into them in the dark.

I started talking to my dogs, telling them to stay calm, stay close to Mommy, don't be scared, yada yada yada. Then I looked around and saw that my dang dogs had already taken off! Right about now I was really wishing I had taken their advice and stayed home; they hadn't wanted to come out for a walk in the first place.

So I start shining my flashlight around and talking in a loud voice (because someone once told me you should let the bear know you're there) saying, "Hello bear, if you can see me, and I really hope you can't...no, no I hope you CAN so you can avoid me because I really don't want to meet you...well, I mean I'm sure you're very nice, I didn't mean to be rude, OH ANYWAY, I mean you no harm" when a voice right behind me says succinctly, "Why don't you just tell him you're from the planet Looney and you come in peace?"

Well, at least that showed me that I have a strong, healthy heart because, by rights, I should have had a heart attack right then and there. It also showed me that another part of my body is strong because I didn't leave a "pile" of my own on the path. But my husband? Well...I bet he'll never follow me around in the dark and make smart-ass remarks EVER AGAIN. Even if it did take me a while to catch him.

The Delegation

These little Purple Finches were waiting for me when I went out this morning to fill the feeders. I felt like they thought that somehow the snow that fell last night was my fault, and they were the delegation elected by the other birds to let me know they did NOT approve. I told them, "Hey, don't look at me in that tone of chirp; I don't control the weather!"

I know many people would scoff at my anthropomorphism, but I believe that, if you pay close attention, it is sometimes possible to discern what animals are trying to tell us. I believe this is especially true of our companion animals (known in this cottage as "our children in fur.")

And sometimes you don't have to pay attention at all. They make it crystal clear. I remember once, in early autumn, I was sitting in a chair under the apple tree closest to our house and reading a book when a green apple hit me in the head. I thought, "Huh. Must have had a weak stem." Then, about a minute later, another one hit me. This time I picked it up and looked at it. It had had one tiny bite taken out of it. While I was pondering this, another one hit me in the head. I looked up into the tree and there was a squirrel. He pulled another apple off the branch, took one bite and threw it at me! I think he was telling me the apples tasted terrible. Well yeah, they weren't ripe. I caught the last apple and threw it back at him. I have terrible aim, so I missed him and he just smirked at me. He reached for another apple and I yelled, "Touch that apple and you're dead meat, buddy!" I would never hurt any animal, but he didn't know I was bluffing, and he left in a big huff, scolding me as he went.  Hmmmm...

It's MINE!

That's what Betsy is still saying to me 12 hours after she found a piece of broiled chicken on the kitchen floor this morning. I don't normally let the cats or dogs into the kitchen, so I can only assume that the chicken fell off the plate last night after dinner. She zipped into the kitchen ahead of me this morning, which she does every morning, zooming around the floor once or twice, then dashing out the door. Betsy doesn't do anything slowly. But this morning, she skidded to a halt mid-zoom and started pawing frantically under the kitchen counter. Before I could get over to her, she had the chicken, holding it down with both paws and gnawing on it. I was afraid it might make her sick after being unrefrigerated for so long so I took it away from her. That sounded easy, didn't it? Well, it wasn't! As soon as I said, "Oh, Betsy, give..." she didn't even wait for me to finish the sentence but took off, chicken firmly in mouth. The fact that the piece of chicken was hanging down between her front paws didn't slow her down one bit. What slowed me down was that her siblings (canine and feline) immediately realized that she had a goodie and started chasing her, thereby getting between me and my quarry. So there I am, chasing the whole herd, all of whom can run much faster than I can, through the dining room, across the living room, through the foyer, up the stairs (and I'm really running out of steam by now), down the upstairs hallway...and Betsy reaches the end of the hallway and turns around. She turns around while I'm still standing, sides heaving, gasping desperately for air, certain cardiac arrest will occur any second, at the top of the stairs...and the whole herd turns with her and thunders back down the hallway right at me. Their paws didn't even slip once on the hardwood floor! The only thing that saved me from being knocked down the stairs by the vicious herd of galloping mountain lions and slavering wolves...er, I mean cats and dogs...was that the door to my husband's den was open and I leaped into the opening, a mere nano second ahead of my supposed-to-be-loving-children-in-fur. This brush with certain death renewed my adrenalin and I charged down the stairs after them, yelling words that probably couldn't be said here, and cornered the lot of them in the laundry room. Betsy had leapt up to a narrow ledge where I keep the soap and was gloating over her prize ("I have it and I'm not going to share, I caught it and it's MINE"), when I shoved my way through her whining siblings ("Mom said we have to share, I'm gonna tell") and snatched it from her, saying "Shame on you, shame on all of you!" Her siblings walked out with a "yeah, whatever" attitude and Betsy, my sweet little Betsy, swatted at me! Was she embarrassed by this bad behavior? Chagrined by her attempt to hit her loving human mother? Not in the least. She just stared at me and grumpily said, "Well, YOU dropped it, I caught it, it's MINE!"