Baby Hummingbird video (not my own work)

The following is NOT my material.....it was sent to me in an email, but it is so wonderful and amazing that I had to share it with you.  I am still gasping and uttering those wful "aww" noises.  Hope you enjoy it.

This is actually a pretty amazing story about a baby hummingbird that was found on a sidewalk.  He couldn't fly, so I took him under my wing.  At night, he would come home to our house for safety.  During the day, he was in the backyard of the house near where I found him.  About 4 days after I found him, I was holding him in my cupped hands when his mama came by to feed him.  She had seen me around, I guess, because she just flew over, perched on my hand and then fed him.  This happened a number of times, so I called a friend who is good with a video camera, and he came over to film some of the amazing goings on that I told him about. I hope this is enough info to give you some context for the video we posted to YouTube.  Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7xBLvMIBZU

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Change Is Good......Or So They Say

Hello, precious pals....sorry , dear ones........no photos today.......you must be satisfied with my endless drivel..........I come to you slightly out of breath after executing one of my many odd maneuvers using one of  my new skills......... that of propelling the wheelchair from dining table to kitchen trash basket while clutching a banana peel in one of the crucial hands.  (no mean feat, I will have you know, since the chair tends to go very cattywampus in  circles when you do not exert equal pressure on both wheels)  (fortunately I have learned to compensate by using the appropriate foot-scrabbling-on-the-floor maneuver to correct the steering at crucial intervals)  By this you are not to assume that I am still a prisoner of my various pieces of equipment.....nay, I have even added one new tool....that of Pete's favorite Cane!  I have been gallumphing around the place at a breakneck (sorry...poor choice of words) speed using only the cane which frees up one hand nicely for chores such as carrying banana peels.  I chose, in the above case, to use the wheel chair simply because I was already sitting in it to read my email and was too lazy to lift my fanny from the comfy seat.  Sometimes it takes me 5 minutes to decide which piece of equipment is ideal for the chore.........a dreadful waste of time,  and even so I often choose wrong causing me to find myself propelling the wheelchair with only my feet because both hands are clutching a lapful of the stuff  I am attempting to transport from dining room to kitchen.  Consolee, my precious caregiver, used to break up laughing at me, contending that I looked like an toddler in one of those walkabout toy seats.....I didn't care one whit how I looked....I just wanted to get the various dishes and glasses from table to sink.  As for why I didn't ask her to perform the task........simply because I forgot.....I am still learning the finer points of  How-To-Be-Waited-On-Hand-and-Foot...........it ain't all that easy to learn even when you have been waiting for the opportunity your whole life.  Which (finally) brings me to the subject I had intended to blog about......

These last 2 months have been among the most interesting and challenging (and exhausting) of my life.........I have been required to change into so many different people over that time that my head is spinning and my fingers are figuratively bloody from trying to clutch and hang on to whatever was normal and comfortable for me the day before yesterday.   You can picture me clinging to the door jambs and screeching at the top of my lungs as I was dragged from Independent Recluse to Namby Pamby Near Total Invalid.  Only my inabilty to lift a finger forced me learn to accept that role and play it gracefully....and then to begin (to my horror) to enjoy it and get really good at it.  Next,  before I even had time to add a few niceties to my role as Complete and Total Schlubb, I found that the physical therapy had reinvigorated a muscle here and there and it was necessary for me to abandon the Fainting Camille bit and embrace a new creature who could at least make it to the potty on my own with the aid of the Walker and much muttering and groaning.  (Actually a welcome triumph not at all resented by me, but requiring a real change of self from helpless ninny to semi-skilled invalid)

And even more earth shaking was the need to change from being a total hermit who could only tolerate human company for a few hours a day (or a week is more like it) to a gregarious social being who welcomed her caregivers eagerly and reluctantly bid them goodbye at the end of the shift.........not merely because of the need for care as for company.  Who WAS this person and what ever happened to Lois the Recluse?  Seriously, this required a monumental shift of main internal mechanisms and there were mornings I would wake up and not know who in the hell I was........especially since the hour of awakening was suddenly 7 AM rather than 1 or 2 PM and I would find myself welcoming being awake during the morning sunlight hours.  (so THAT'S what morning looks like.....)

All in all it has been totally overwhelming and I am still in the throes of metamorphosis.........I have heard lots of.......shall we call them senior citizens  (and many not so Senior).........defend their stubborn refusal to switch to a better path with the tired excuse, "I'm too old to change!"  I've got news for you, Honey Lamb......that is a crock of shit.  (I even changed from being only 82 to 83 during all of the above).

Failure to Blog - Crime or Misdemeanor?

No, no, I have not fallen down and broken something else......I am physically OK and doing well. ( Thank you my dears  (especially "Far Side of Fifty" ) for worrying about me......sorry I appear to have deserted you.)  I  am in the midst of coping with a different type of trauma.........that of giving up my angel, Consolee.  So far I have managed to achieve a sort of compromise but the struggle has occupied me totally and I have been unable to turn on my blogging self.

I think I have achieved a resolution of my problem....I will know in a few more days.  Meanwhile, you dear buddies will have to continue to be deprived, but I promise you, no need to worry about me during the drought.

I will be back very shortly.....not necessarily better than ever,  but hopefully not too much worse.

Hang in there folks.  I still love you all.

Saved By the Camera.........score: Words - 0, Pix - 63.33

Here's that no-good, lazy blogger cheating again.........With Consolee's help I just downloaded some pix from my camera......some go back months, others were taken only yesterday and I am thrilled to have them accessible (I hope).  The subjects are critters who have delighted me in  various ways........many of the pictures are really awful but were the best I could manage under the circumstances........trying to shoot the porch buffet at night ain't easy when you have glass and screens in between you and your target.  However, I shamelessly offer them for what they are worth.......for me that is always a smile, a giggle and a few sighs and moans at the charm and beauty of my visitors.  This first pic is one of my insatiable hummingbirds totally out of focus but definitely close-up and personal.  It does show his gorgeous irridescent magenta head.

Here he is taking a breather on a bush
outside my kitchen window.

Incidentally, these were daytime shots not nocturnal.   I have about 8 feeders, 4 of which are visible from my kitchen so I can have entertainment while chopping veggies.  Since I use a formidable cleaver for my chopping I am glad I learned the "fold the holding fingers under at all times" method.......I only forget once in a while.........ouch.

This is one of the raccoon family.....there was a mamma and four babies....the babies grew prodigiously and I could not tell which were the young 'uns and which was the Mamma.  They were all gorgeous and charming.

Below are two of the babies.  I loved watching them when they chose to eat with their fingers by skillfully picking up a single piece of kibble and tucking it into their mouths.

Beo

Here is my latest freeloader.....an utterly adorable baby possum I have named Pogo. (does anyone remember Walt Kelly's marvelous comicstrip?)

This guy comes several times during the day as well as at night.  He has decided to sit in the midst of his dinner while he eats and when he is full he climbs up the side of the water bowl and sits on the rim and drinks.  One day the water level was a bit too low for him and as he stretched forward to get to the water he fell in.  I rushed out to help him so I missed seeing how he extricated himself.  By the time I got back to watching he was perched on the rim of the bowl  trying again.   What a cutie!

So this is how I entertain myself and what a lot of joy these critters provide.

Upper Fairfax Revisited

My faithful readers may remember earlier references to my days of wild abandon when I had my studio on North Fairfax.........days and nights of depraved revelry guzzling cheap wine, brewing and dispensing hundreds of pots of coffee to droppers-in (I used to say that if I had sold the coffee and given away my ceramics I would have been a huge success.....this was  before the invention of the coffee house, by the way), and, sort of incidentally,was also involved in the endless potching, shaping, decorating and firing of clay works of art in the midst of all this revelry.  I know I promised more tantalizing revelations from this period and I am here to deliver.

Before I continue I must properly describe the setting......otherwise it will make little sense, I fear.  (Hey....it may make little sense even if I describe the setting in excruciating detail, but, as you know, I am undaunted by that.)

My shop was one of three adjoining shops that had been built onto the front of an old 1930's house.  Mine was the center one and I was lucky enough to have the original living room of the house complete with a real wood burning fireplace...........my living/sleeping quarters up 4 steps at the back of the shop area.  There was also a mini-bathroom consisting of a toilet and stall shower and, in the shop itself, a sink.  I had carved out a samll kitchen area around the sink and had installed some hanging cabinets over the sink and a work counter with primitive open storage beneath, a second hand frig and 4 burner apartment stove.  It was really a very efficient working kitchen, but only for one small person and it was here that I often produced nearly gourmet meals for my friends.

One of said friends was a wonderful, brilliant, funny writer named Sasha who came by often for conversation, nourishment, occasional friendly sex and various games like scrabble and all sorts of word games which we both adored.  One night I invited Sasha to a special dinner.......I had splurged on a gorgeous piece of steak and intended to grill it in the fireplace (which worked very well as a grill site incidentally) and offer a salad and baked potatoes followed by my marvelous apple pie with cheddar cheese baked right  in the crust.......heavenly.  Sasha arrived and I had the grill all set up in the fireplace and the charcoal just about ready for grilling.  The oinkly  (oh another lovely combination that really should be a word)  as I was saying, the only glitch was that the salad had to be prepared by me in the kitchen which was about 25 feet and 4 steps down away from the grill in the fireplace so I took the obvious path to solving this problem.  I put the steak on the grill and installed Sasha on a chair by the fireplace with all the necessary tools and acoutrements to remove the steak at the proper moment and the instructions to "watch   the steak, please while I assemble and toss the salad".  "OK" said Sasha with a confident grin.

As I tore up greens with wild abandon I would periodically call out to Sasha ...."are you watching the steak?" and he would reassuringly reply, "Yes, yes I am watching it". Finally  the moment arrived when the salad was ready, likewise the baked potatoes and I trotted back and up the steps to my living room with the dinner on a tray.

"How is the steak?", I asked...... And Sasha looked up at me with innocent brown eyes and said  "I think it is burnt.....

Oh, The Shame of It

Holy Moly......it is a week since I uttered a blog-word to my dear friends and I am deeply ashamed, sorrowful, repentant and whatever.  And it isn't as if I haven't tried......I have sat here staring at the virgin New Blog screen on many a morning and been unable to come up with a swingle word........that, of course, was meant to be "single" but I rather like "swingle"...if it isn't a word it ought to be.

I have also spent many an hour trying to analyze what the impediment is  (very different from writers'  block) and what may have altered within me during my recent trials and tribulations but I keep bruising my nose against a solid blank wall.  However, today is my caregiver's day off and I am detecting an ineffable something........the vibrations are different when I am here alone and when Consolee is here with me...........somehow the solitude seems to have turned off the evil rays which have been blocking my blogging.  Now, don't get me wrong, folks.....I am not blaming Angel-child Consolee.............and it is not simply that, when I have someone to talk to,  the need to blog is somehow diminished because no conversation compares with the sharing that goes on here.  I can only assume that the  distraction of a presence alters my Blogability in some way.  Or perhaps it is simply that Lois, the Hermit is a Blogger while Lois, the gregarious social butterfly is not.  At any rate, I will simply take advantage of this hermit-day and pass on a few photos and random thoughts while the spirit is with me.

First, I must revert to my Pollyanna state and confess that, when the two of us sit in Crochet Corner  gazing out into my little overgrown courtyard where the bougainvilla and jasmine vines spill over the wall in wild profusion, I am constantly reminded that I have the enormous privilege to live in Paradise.  When I ripped out the 3 little sash windows in my living room and installed floor to ceiling glass panels I certainly knew what I was doing though I never envisioned that a klutzy tumble would install me in my recliner to gaze out for so many hours at a time.  Anyway, all I can say is I am certainly glad I did.

Oddly enough,  speaking of bougainvilla,. I have never had such a profusion of blossoms until this year when I have been forced by my enfeebled condition to neglect everything that is growing outside........hmmm.....could it be that plants resent having a Jewish Mother who is constantly pinching their little leaves and muttering, "eat, eat, and flourish, mine kindt" ?

These are potted bougainvilla in the back yard overlooking the pool...........never looked this good in all the years in have wrung my hands over them.

And, here is a rare shot of Baskin, my anti-social  ingrate of a cat who has not let me touch him in the 6 or 7 years I have had him and for whom I went to the trouble of adopting Winnie to keep him from being so lonely....as you can see......my ploy was a success....he huddles near Winnie whenever he can and basks in her presence.......the little idiot.  He could have had 7 years of petting if he weren't so stubborn....ah well......maybe some cats need to be hermits.........ya think?

Meet The Girls

I know, I know......I have been awful, totally remiss and neglectful and I can't promise that I am going to get much better in the near future, but my lovely caregiver has taken some great photos of my babies, Gussie and Winnie, so I figure if I pass on a few of them for your amusement and entertainment it is better than total deprivation........

These 2 so-called cats are our constant companions as we sit in Crochet Corner day after day.  Amazingly, they do not cause a great deal of trouble in regard to the bounteous balls of yarn that are strewn hither and yon around our feet ......the real trouble comes during the Great Chair Wars.  My favorite crochet site is my lovely leather recliner with footstool;  Consolee relishes the black leather Moderne armchair that faces it.  Winnie will fight you for either one and Gussie wants sole possession of mine including the footstool.  Any time either of us grown ups raises our fannies and relinquishes our territories they are immediately taken over by certain furry creatures and one of the hardest things I have to do each day is physically evict a cat from my favorite chair.  I AM getting better at it but it it not my greatest skill and Consolee is even worse at it than I am.  Sigh.  We spend a lot of time shifting from foot to foot,wringing our hands and contemplating our options.

 If you can conjure up a ridiculous picture, imagine two grown women racing madly across the living room trying to settle their fannies into the chairs before the cats beat them to it.
A nightmare game of musical chairs that no one can really win.  Two chairs, four bodies and two sets of reproachful green eyes (if we win)....(2 sets of aggravated brown eyes if we lose.)

The first  photo is Winnie settling into Consolee's chair for a lovely nap.  The yawn and the stretch are too human-like to bear.


The picture below on the right is Winnie, mid-nap, just checking with half opened eyes to see if she is missing anything of note.  I particularly love the languid pose.

The photo below is of Gussie and Consolee......not the  best pic of either but OK for a start.

I am going to let the pics speak for me in today's offering.
Perhaps tomorrow I can come up with some words.
Stay tuned.