Always look on the bright siiiide of life...

Stuck in my head since we re-watched "The Life of Brian" last week. Monty Python just never gets old!

This is the butterfly mobile that we worked on for several hours over the course of a few nights. It's the labor-intensive craft I was referring to earlier this week. She did much of this on her own, and it was really tough. Every wire had to be twisted/bent into shape. All of the thin hanging wire had to be measured, cut, and strung with beads and butterflies and crimped appropriately. She's very proud of it, and it's hanging in the one spot in her bedroom that we think the cats will not be able to get at it. The butterflies are actually made of feathers, and our cats LOVE feathers and will go to great lengths to get them to play with. They actually made it very difficult to work on the mobile. They were driving us crazy trying to steal the butterflies and bat the beads around!

This morning started out way too early, with a wakeup call from the cats. Ivan was particularly cantankerous and was determined to lie in my bedroom doorway and growl whenever one of the other cats moved. My brain is trained to instantly awaken when I hear a cat growl or hiss, so this woke me up and the fact that he continued to growl every 10 minutes or so all morning, guaranteed that I would stay awake. I had to pick Allegrea up at 9, so we could meet our friend, Les, for breakfast. A. and I noticed a strange phenomenon years ago, in that if the two of us are in a car together, we will run into an animal-crisis, probably 75% of the time (or more?). It's very odd, but we've just accepted it as a fact of life and laugh about it. This morning was no exception.

I was driving down Beloit Ave., when we all noticed something in the road. Because we are who we are, I slowed down to try to identify it. It became clear that it was a baby bird sitting in the road, in the right lane, and we were traveling in the left lane. Just at that moment, a hawk swooped down at the baby. I honked my horn like a crazy woman, and either because the hawk was young or not that hungry, she took off and left the baby mourning dove alone. Hawks are usually much more persistent and less easily distracted from their prey than this one was. I stopped in the road, put my flashers on, and Allegrea and I got out, while Luciana waited in the back seat. We then saw a semi bearing down on us in the right lane. We hoped it would stop/slow down, and it did. We quickly snatched the very wet, frightened baby up, jumped back in the car, and started driving with her sitting in my lap. We pulled into a gas station, and they kindly gave us a small box for her. This adventure ended up with a happy ending, so far anyway. The baby is here, she's okay and eating and drinking. Of course with young birds, they are quite delicate, and she is a long way from being "out of the woods". Her poop looks good, which is one of the main indicators of a bird's internal health. We're optimistic at this point and are working on coming up with a name, so we don't have to refer to her as "the baby".

While I wouldn't have done anything differently with the mourning dove situation, I still had some guilt over depriving the poor hungry hawk of his sustenance. I am great at finding ways to feel bad and feel guilty in any situation.

My tattoo is healing beautifully, and the new balm Austin gave me has made it so much less itchy than tats normally are when they heal. It's wonderful! I've had it scratched open once by Jezebel, who was very excited to see me. That scab was then ripped open and scratched worse when Tica accidentally nailed the same spot. That area is pretty sore and ugly, but it will be fine eventually. Worst case, I may have to have the tip of the starfish touched up later.

On that topic, I've have a mini rant on tattoos. Sometimes I get or hear comments to the effect of, "I would like a tattoo, but worry about how it will look when I'm an old woman." Here's my take. I've never once thought or heard anyone say, "Wow. What a lovely expanse of crepe-paper wrinkly white skin. The age spots form a beautiful pattern." I guess I personally don't care if my old lady skin is pasty and pristine. I'd much rather look at pretty colors!

On our last library visit, L. picked out a video called, "Cat TV". It is a half hour video made specifically for cats to watch. She played it this afternoon for Jasper, who LOVED it. He was completely entranced by it for the entire half hour, except for the little section that showed fish. He was bored by the fish. When the video ended, he kept head butting L. non-stop for five minutes straight. She said, "I think he wants me to put the video back on". So I started it over, he sat up straight and tall, perked his ears back up, the tail started flicking, and he was a happy boy for another half hour. We'll show it to the other cats later. Some of them watch tv and some don't, so I am guessing only the tv watchers will really get into it. It's so cute to watch them get all excited over it!

M & L went to a minor league baseball game tonight. He got tickets for them as a surprise to L., thinking she would enjoy seeing a real baseball game after having played baseball this summer. Because we don't go to or watch any sports games on tv, she has never seen a baseball game other than at her Y league. We've gotten some rain tonight--not too much, and we weren't sure if they would play tonight or not. Looks like they went ahead with the game, as they aren't back yet. I hope she enjoys it!

Today is our wedding anniversary. Yay for us--we made it through another year. :D We're not romantic, mushy people, though, so we don't really do anything special for our anniversary. We're definitely not into spending a buttload of money on a piece of paper that will end up in recycling, so we don't do the greeting card thing at all. We will do something this Saturday for date night, but I'm not yet privy to what we're doing. Only M. knows.