The presumptive sparrow baby is no longer in the nest, so I guess I was right on his status, sadly enough. (Special thanks to Mama Finch for disposing of the corpse someplace out of sight and not just kicking it to the floor of the porch for me to find.) There is a newly hatched baby finch alongside the one that hatched yesterday, so total nest count at this point is two baby finches and three eggs yet to hatch.
Also, the problem with the Sienna's AC seems to be actually related to the work they did on it the last time. Then, they'd said the problem was one of two things (or possibly both) and at their suggestion, we had them do the lesser of the two fixes and hoped that would take care of it. Since it was the larger, more complicated and expensive issue, they are going to credit the work they did last time towards this fix, which knocks a good bit off of the still-costly bill, but they think this will take care of it once and for all. (As it should since we've now replaced just about the entire AC system...) The bad news is that they don't have the part they need on hand so we'll have to do the complicated Drop Off the Van routine again either on Friday or Saturday. The mechanic did say that he thinks we should have a few more good, problem-free years at least left on the van, given the state of everything else in it and the shape it's in, now that the AC issue will be resolved. Hope he's right!!
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Eggstra, Eggstra! Read all about it!
(Wow, the eggciting terms just keep on coming. Hee!)
First, the good news - another baby birdie has hatched in the nest! The new finch baby is a lot smaller than the presumptive sparrow, as one might expect given the difference in egg sizes.
Now, the bad news - it doesn't appear that the baby sparrow has survived. It looked quite still and as though it was not breathing when I took the baskets down as they were being blown almost perpendicular in yesterday's thunderstorms. (I continue to try to disturb the nest as little as possible, so I do not touch the actual nest and am going only on brief, visual observation here.) Mama finch is still tending to/sitting on the nest, so I don't think it is a case of abandonment. Hubby speculates that perhaps once the baby finch appeared, Mama figured out the first baby was not one of hers and stopped caring for it. Who knows? (Probably some ornithologist, but we're certainly not bird experts.) All I know is, I hope that I am wrong and the sparrow chick is still alive, but if it is dead, I hope Mama finch removes it from the nest and not just to the porch floor, as happened last year. (Ick.) So, that's two eggs down, four to go!
(Side note: it cooled down during the storm front yesterday, which enabled me to turn off the central air and open the windows to air out the house. Papa Finch was most displeased with his apparently new found awareness of our cat, who had immediately planted herself in an opened upstairs window - not the window nearest the petunia baskets, mind you. He perched on the roof about 3 feet away from where she was sunning herself and minding her own business and cheeped at her quite angrily. She looked at me with this "Huh?!? What did I do?" expression and after a few more minutes of him cheeping, she hopped down out of the windowsill and stalked off into the back of the house, away from Papa finch. After she left the window, he stopped cheeping and flew away.)
First, the good news - another baby birdie has hatched in the nest! The new finch baby is a lot smaller than the presumptive sparrow, as one might expect given the difference in egg sizes.
Now, the bad news - it doesn't appear that the baby sparrow has survived. It looked quite still and as though it was not breathing when I took the baskets down as they were being blown almost perpendicular in yesterday's thunderstorms. (I continue to try to disturb the nest as little as possible, so I do not touch the actual nest and am going only on brief, visual observation here.) Mama finch is still tending to/sitting on the nest, so I don't think it is a case of abandonment. Hubby speculates that perhaps once the baby finch appeared, Mama figured out the first baby was not one of hers and stopped caring for it. Who knows? (Probably some ornithologist, but we're certainly not bird experts.) All I know is, I hope that I am wrong and the sparrow chick is still alive, but if it is dead, I hope Mama finch removes it from the nest and not just to the porch floor, as happened last year. (Ick.) So, that's two eggs down, four to go!
(Side note: it cooled down during the storm front yesterday, which enabled me to turn off the central air and open the windows to air out the house. Papa Finch was most displeased with his apparently new found awareness of our cat, who had immediately planted herself in an opened upstairs window - not the window nearest the petunia baskets, mind you. He perched on the roof about 3 feet away from where she was sunning herself and minding her own business and cheeped at her quite angrily. She looked at me with this "Huh?!? What did I do?" expression and after a few more minutes of him cheeping, she hopped down out of the windowsill and stalked off into the back of the house, away from Papa finch. After she left the window, he stopped cheeping and flew away.)
Monday, June 9, 2008
(egg) Breaking News!!!
I just took down the petunia baskets to water them, as they're quite droopy between the sun and the brisk, hot breeze, and look who decided to pop out:
This is the baby out of the presumptive sparrow egg, (as you can see) the five matching, smaller eggs are still intact. Mama Finch was super ticked at my disruption of her motherly duties - I watered as fast (yet carefully) as I could and rehung the basket while she cheeped and cheeped at me. She went back to the nest as soon as I'd closed the front door behind me. I'm guessing we'll have more babies in the next couple of days, as the egg that hatched today wasn't the first one laid. Woo-hoo! (Also, I haven't seen the sparrow hanging around in the past couple of days, either in the front near the nest or in the back yard, where this year's birdfeeder frequenters are eating us out of house and home, or at least out of gigantic bags of seed.)
In other nature and wildlife-related news, yesterday after church I was mowing the lawn when, in the back yard along the back of the kiddo's sandbox, I came across this:
It's about two feet long, and isn't a complete specimen. I skeeved Hubby out by picking it up with my bare hands and bringing it inside to show him and the kiddo. (The kiddo who promptly requested to bring it in to school today to show to her class, which she did with great excitement this morning.) Once it was safely contained in a gallon-sized baggie and my hands had been thoroughly washed, Hubby was more inclined to inspect the snake skin. Now, we've only ever seen garter snakes around our little piece o' property, and the largest of those that we've ever spotted was maybe a foot long. Neither of us believe this came from a garter snake, and I have no idea what kind of snake it belonged to before it was shed. Here's a close-up of the skin in case there are any herpetology enthusiasts out there who might be able to identify it.
I was thinking of taking it (with the kiddo) to the zoo and seeing if anyone there might know, but with the AC issue (as described in painful detail in my previous post) I didn't want to do any extra driving today. Let's hope that whatever type of snake it is, its diet consists primarily of many, many voles and that if so, s/he sticks around for the rest of the summer. It'd be awfully nice to be vole-free, especially without having to resort to placing boxes of rodent poison way under the deck (well out of any human or feline's reach) as we've had to do a few times in previous years when the vole infestation has been particularly prolific.
We're positively brimming with wildlife 'round here! Between the birdies, the snake, the toad I almost ran over with the mower, Bunny Foo-Foo (who has munched a good portion of this year's food garden, now replanted and surrounded by organic Keep-Bunny-Away granules), the vole community under the deck and the geese, ducks, herons, deer, muskrats and what appears to be a beaver family in the pond out behind our back yard, well, call up the ghost of Marlin Perkins and have him bring a camera crew on over!
This is the baby out of the presumptive sparrow egg, (as you can see) the five matching, smaller eggs are still intact. Mama Finch was super ticked at my disruption of her motherly duties - I watered as fast (yet carefully) as I could and rehung the basket while she cheeped and cheeped at me. She went back to the nest as soon as I'd closed the front door behind me. I'm guessing we'll have more babies in the next couple of days, as the egg that hatched today wasn't the first one laid. Woo-hoo! (Also, I haven't seen the sparrow hanging around in the past couple of days, either in the front near the nest or in the back yard, where this year's birdfeeder frequenters are eating us out of house and home, or at least out of gigantic bags of seed.)
In other nature and wildlife-related news, yesterday after church I was mowing the lawn when, in the back yard along the back of the kiddo's sandbox, I came across this:
It's about two feet long, and isn't a complete specimen. I skeeved Hubby out by picking it up with my bare hands and bringing it inside to show him and the kiddo. (The kiddo who promptly requested to bring it in to school today to show to her class, which she did with great excitement this morning.) Once it was safely contained in a gallon-sized baggie and my hands had been thoroughly washed, Hubby was more inclined to inspect the snake skin. Now, we've only ever seen garter snakes around our little piece o' property, and the largest of those that we've ever spotted was maybe a foot long. Neither of us believe this came from a garter snake, and I have no idea what kind of snake it belonged to before it was shed. Here's a close-up of the skin in case there are any herpetology enthusiasts out there who might be able to identify it.
I was thinking of taking it (with the kiddo) to the zoo and seeing if anyone there might know, but with the AC issue (as described in painful detail in my previous post) I didn't want to do any extra driving today. Let's hope that whatever type of snake it is, its diet consists primarily of many, many voles and that if so, s/he sticks around for the rest of the summer. It'd be awfully nice to be vole-free, especially without having to resort to placing boxes of rodent poison way under the deck (well out of any human or feline's reach) as we've had to do a few times in previous years when the vole infestation has been particularly prolific.
We're positively brimming with wildlife 'round here! Between the birdies, the snake, the toad I almost ran over with the mower, Bunny Foo-Foo (who has munched a good portion of this year's food garden, now replanted and surrounded by organic Keep-Bunny-Away granules), the vole community under the deck and the geese, ducks, herons, deer, muskrats and what appears to be a beaver family in the pond out behind our back yard, well, call up the ghost of Marlin Perkins and have him bring a camera crew on over!
Hot mess
As most people living in the northeast of the US are already aware, we're in the midst of a hot spell. I'm not sure how many days it takes of consecutive hot days to officially constitute a heat wave, but we've been above normal - way above normal - since late last week. Looking at the 10 day forecast on the Weather Channel's site, it doesn't look like we'll be back to more seasonably warm-but-not-roasting temperatures 'til early next week. That means several more days of "oh my goodness, have we moved to the face of the Sun?" type heat to get through.
And, yes it is a cliché, but it is true: it's not the heat, it's the humidity. I don't mind heat, so long as it's a dry heat. I've happily hung out outdoors in Vegas when it was over 110 in the shade. I'm talking Vegas in July and August, with nary a complaint. The humidity, though, that's the thing that I abhor - when you walk outside and the air touching your skin has the feeling of a large dog's tongue licking you, if that large dog had just run a marathon then drunk warm chocolate syrup. That is what makes air conditioning so delightful, no?
Unfortunately, this week's heat coincides with the AC in our minivan failing. This in and of itself is a bad thing, but it is compounded by the fact that this isn't the first time the AC has gone kaput. It isn't even the second time. No, this is the fourth time within a 13 month period that it's died on us. The first time was last May, when it was warm but not crazy hot. We took it in, had it repaired, paid the bill and thought that was that. When it conked out a little over a month later, we were in the midst of a six-hours-each-way road trip for a family wedding. It was significantly hotter that weekend and driving home especially was most unpleasant. We called the dealership from the road and made arrangements to have it re-fixed. We were a bit less thrilled with the bill the second time around, but we really thought that was that. Which it was, until May rolled around this year and it died for a third time. This time, Hubby called the dealership with a good deal of righteous indignation. We certainly didn't feel like forking over several hundred dollars for something they'd supposedly fixed twice already. Well, whaddya know - this time, the problem was in an entirely different part of the AC system, and a more expensive, extensive repair-required part to boot. Crapola. Several hours and over a grand later, the van was cool once again, until this past weekend, when the AC once more gave up the ghost.
Now, we have a Toyota. We love Toyotas. We've driven nothing but Toyotas since we bought a Tercel back when we were newlyweds. That Tercel lasted through 14 years of bad upstate NY and northern New England winters, driving from NY to Florida and back, driving between NY and NH through the mountains and mud season for over a year - it was a great car. We had the most minimal maintenance/repair expenses over its hard-driven 14 years and it was just ridiculously reliable. Our Tercel had close to 200,000 miles on it when we traded it in for a new Camry last summer. We also had a Corolla for a few years on a lease, that we turned in for the Sienna back in 2000. We've been hoping that the Sienna will last us another couple of years, which doesn't seem too far-fetched, and we certainly don't want a second car payment added into the budget. I don't think we've had two simultaneous car payments in ten years, back when gas was less than a buck a gallon. But then again, we're not keen on dropping a thousand dollars every other month to get the AC working again either.
So, we are taking the van in on Wednesday to find out what's broken this time and how much it's going to cost us. With our luck, it will be a new problem so not something they'll graciously fix for free. The forecasted high for tomorrow is 85, with thunderstorms. That'll be one toasty drive to preschool. At least today, we could drive with the windows open. (Which, by the by, doesn't do the Wolverine Fawcett-Van Beethoven 'do any favors. "Windswept" isn't exactly the adjective one wants to add to "ginormous, Jersey hair" you know. It literally becomes one hot mess of hair. I could hairspray the heck out of my hair - I'm talking Sally Field in Steel Magnolias levels of helmet-head - and the wind pattern through the van with both windows rolled down would still kill it. Egad.) That would be one advantage if it does wind up being more cost-effective to replace the Sienna instead of repairing the AC again - the new models have back windows that roll down. That might come in handy some day...
So, hopefully the current AC issue is easily, quickly, cheaply and permanently resolved. If not, hopefully there are some really excellent deals to be had both on trading in an 8 year old Sienna with a bum AC system and buying a new Sienna with functioning AC...
And, yes it is a cliché, but it is true: it's not the heat, it's the humidity. I don't mind heat, so long as it's a dry heat. I've happily hung out outdoors in Vegas when it was over 110 in the shade. I'm talking Vegas in July and August, with nary a complaint. The humidity, though, that's the thing that I abhor - when you walk outside and the air touching your skin has the feeling of a large dog's tongue licking you, if that large dog had just run a marathon then drunk warm chocolate syrup. That is what makes air conditioning so delightful, no?
Unfortunately, this week's heat coincides with the AC in our minivan failing. This in and of itself is a bad thing, but it is compounded by the fact that this isn't the first time the AC has gone kaput. It isn't even the second time. No, this is the fourth time within a 13 month period that it's died on us. The first time was last May, when it was warm but not crazy hot. We took it in, had it repaired, paid the bill and thought that was that. When it conked out a little over a month later, we were in the midst of a six-hours-each-way road trip for a family wedding. It was significantly hotter that weekend and driving home especially was most unpleasant. We called the dealership from the road and made arrangements to have it re-fixed. We were a bit less thrilled with the bill the second time around, but we really thought that was that. Which it was, until May rolled around this year and it died for a third time. This time, Hubby called the dealership with a good deal of righteous indignation. We certainly didn't feel like forking over several hundred dollars for something they'd supposedly fixed twice already. Well, whaddya know - this time, the problem was in an entirely different part of the AC system, and a more expensive, extensive repair-required part to boot. Crapola. Several hours and over a grand later, the van was cool once again, until this past weekend, when the AC once more gave up the ghost.
Now, we have a Toyota. We love Toyotas. We've driven nothing but Toyotas since we bought a Tercel back when we were newlyweds. That Tercel lasted through 14 years of bad upstate NY and northern New England winters, driving from NY to Florida and back, driving between NY and NH through the mountains and mud season for over a year - it was a great car. We had the most minimal maintenance/repair expenses over its hard-driven 14 years and it was just ridiculously reliable. Our Tercel had close to 200,000 miles on it when we traded it in for a new Camry last summer. We also had a Corolla for a few years on a lease, that we turned in for the Sienna back in 2000. We've been hoping that the Sienna will last us another couple of years, which doesn't seem too far-fetched, and we certainly don't want a second car payment added into the budget. I don't think we've had two simultaneous car payments in ten years, back when gas was less than a buck a gallon. But then again, we're not keen on dropping a thousand dollars every other month to get the AC working again either.
So, we are taking the van in on Wednesday to find out what's broken this time and how much it's going to cost us. With our luck, it will be a new problem so not something they'll graciously fix for free. The forecasted high for tomorrow is 85, with thunderstorms. That'll be one toasty drive to preschool. At least today, we could drive with the windows open. (Which, by the by, doesn't do the Wolverine Fawcett-Van Beethoven 'do any favors. "Windswept" isn't exactly the adjective one wants to add to "ginormous, Jersey hair" you know. It literally becomes one hot mess of hair. I could hairspray the heck out of my hair - I'm talking Sally Field in Steel Magnolias levels of helmet-head - and the wind pattern through the van with both windows rolled down would still kill it. Egad.) That would be one advantage if it does wind up being more cost-effective to replace the Sienna instead of repairing the AC again - the new models have back windows that roll down. That might come in handy some day...
So, hopefully the current AC issue is easily, quickly, cheaply and permanently resolved. If not, hopefully there are some really excellent deals to be had both on trading in an 8 year old Sienna with a bum AC system and buying a new Sienna with functioning AC...
Friday, June 6, 2008
Slip 'n Sliding away
It was hot here today. Really, really hot. Also really, really humid. These two factors combine to affect the Smith Chicks' hair in very different ways. When it is the least bit humid out, the kiddo's hair goes into these ringlet curls - the same curls I have actually paid hair stylists to put in for fancy updo styles, you know, those delicate, curly tendrils that frame one's face oh-so-romantically - and it is absolutely adorable on her. Me, on the other hand? All the humidity and heat do to my Wolverine van Beethoven (now slightly longer but still very, very layered and not nearly long enough to be out of the awkward stage) is make it even larger and more feathered. I guess it is now less Wolverine van Beethoven than Wolverine Fawcett, because it is trying like heck to feather itself all over my head.
Proof right here: (and kindly ignore the glistening and pink cheeks; it was hot and I'd just come in from the gym...)
Yes, you can take the girl out of Jersey, but you'll never take the Jersey out of her hair! I spent a good 20 minutes after my post-gym shower wielding spray gel, "texturizing" spray, anti-frizz goop and hairspray to get the volume to come down on top of my head. Also to get it to come in somewhat on the sides. A daunting task - it made me actually ponder buying a flat iron, but my forehead and ears remember all too well the burns left upon them back in the Scary Curling Iron days of my youth (when you'd fill the barrels with water, then push the end as you were curling so steam would come out, remember? Water + electricity + very close proximity to one's head = brilliant plan...) and so I think I'm going to tough it out a little longer. It can't stay this length forever, right?
So anyhow, it was hot today. The kiddo is mostly recovered from her pneumonia (we saw the doctor this afternoon, who said her lungs are sounding pretty good. Go Zithromax! Woot!) and was feeling antsy after spending most of the week in a very low-key, recovering-from-pneumonia manner. It seemed a fitting time, therefore, to break out one of her recently received birthday presents - a Slip 'n Slide. Now, when I was a kid, we never had a Slip 'n Slide. I didn't even have any friends who owned a Slip 'n Slide, so I never in my life have slipped 'n slid. It was always something that looked like sooooo much fun that I think a little piece of me always felt like my summers were never complete for not having had the Slip 'n Slide experience. Hubby reports the same, sad childhood tale of being utterly deprived of ever having played on a Slip 'n Slide, so the kiddo is the first member of our immediate family to be lucky enough to do so, and on one of her very own to boot! She was begging both of us to go with her, but the very scary warning printed right at the start of the plastic convinced any part of me that was still longing to try it, even just once, that I'm about 30 years too late (and several pounds too heavy) for that. Bummer.
Now, it seems from our (admittedly hazy) recollections from back in the day that the Slip 'n Slide engineering has greatly improved over the decades. What Hubby and I recall was little more than a long strip of plastic that those fortunate children who owned one would complain about tearing and getting punctured very easily. Now, it has a bumper-surrounded catching area at the end, as well as a row of pretty serious sprinklers down the side (which we didn't remember being a feature back in the 70s, but may've in fact been. Like I said, we were both deprived. I seem to remember it just being wet by the hose, but no arcing sprinkler action.)
While I was inside liberally slathering sunscreen on the kiddo, Hubby set up the Slip 'n Slide, angling it along the natural slope of our back yard and checking the underside area for sharp and/or pointy things. As our grass is presently in need of a trim, I think there was more cushioning than there otherwise might've been between the plastic and our hard, hard clay soil, so not a bad thing. Having it head downhill also helped improve the kiddo's sliding potential, of course. She couldn't wait to get sliding. Unfortunately, she really didn't want to attempt a running leap-belly flop combination (as we remember from the TV commercials of our youth), so she mostly just got a running start several yards back on the lawn, then continued running once she reached the plastic until she lost her footing and then slid the rest of the way on her behind/back. This was rather hilarious to watch (as evidenced by my giggling and inability to speak in a normal tone of voice from said giggling while trying out our new video camera) and didn't deter her from repeatedly doing the "run until she fell" maneuver, despite a few rather hard landings. I have a feeling she's going to have a sore behind in the morning...
The biggest downside to any water-related activity in our back yard is the lack of hot water capability. I suppose we could run the hose into the house through the window above the kitchen sink and hook it up to some warmer water courtesy of the kitchen tap, but we never have. Every pool, sprinkler and now Slip 'n Slide we've done has featured icy cold water straight from the outside faucet. This means that despite the great amounts of fun one is having and the incredible heat one may be outdoors in at the time, one's teeth eventually start chattering and one's Mean Mommy pulls the plug on the activity in favor of drying off and warming up. This is especially the case when one is recovering from pneumonia, so the Slip 'n Sliding was cut shorter than the kiddo may've liked. Good thing we're heading to the water park tomorrow, which is set to be another scorchingly hot and humid day!
(Oh, a quick petunia basket nest update: Mama Finch is still sitting on the nest, which still features 6 unhatched eggs, which as of this morning's plant watering were all standing on end. Do eggs turn upright as the baby is getting ready to hatch all on their own? Does the mama bird turn them? Will we have baby birdies soon? Stay tuned......)
(Oh, and a PPS - don't know if anyone noticed or not, but I'm not wearing my glasses in the picture above because I was wearing contacts today. Woo! Contacts! My "one month per eye" supply came in yesterday, and now I'm going to have to begin seriously exercising the restraint I promised myself I would in order to make that "one month" stretch out to three or four months, at least. It is too darn expensive to wear contacts every day at the price I have to pay for these. Though I will wear them tomorrow, since we're going to the amusement park......)
(Last PS for this post, I swear. I just spellchecked, as I somehow have a mental block on how to spell the word exercise - oh, the irony - and the spell check indicated that "scorchingly" is not a word. It gave me the option of "scorching" instead, which has me wondering - why isn't "scorchingly" a word? Is it a word and blogger spell check just doesn't get it? Hmmm.)
Proof right here: (and kindly ignore the glistening and pink cheeks; it was hot and I'd just come in from the gym...)
Yes, you can take the girl out of Jersey, but you'll never take the Jersey out of her hair! I spent a good 20 minutes after my post-gym shower wielding spray gel, "texturizing" spray, anti-frizz goop and hairspray to get the volume to come down on top of my head. Also to get it to come in somewhat on the sides. A daunting task - it made me actually ponder buying a flat iron, but my forehead and ears remember all too well the burns left upon them back in the Scary Curling Iron days of my youth (when you'd fill the barrels with water, then push the end as you were curling so steam would come out, remember? Water + electricity + very close proximity to one's head = brilliant plan...) and so I think I'm going to tough it out a little longer. It can't stay this length forever, right?
So anyhow, it was hot today. The kiddo is mostly recovered from her pneumonia (we saw the doctor this afternoon, who said her lungs are sounding pretty good. Go Zithromax! Woot!) and was feeling antsy after spending most of the week in a very low-key, recovering-from-pneumonia manner. It seemed a fitting time, therefore, to break out one of her recently received birthday presents - a Slip 'n Slide. Now, when I was a kid, we never had a Slip 'n Slide. I didn't even have any friends who owned a Slip 'n Slide, so I never in my life have slipped 'n slid. It was always something that looked like sooooo much fun that I think a little piece of me always felt like my summers were never complete for not having had the Slip 'n Slide experience. Hubby reports the same, sad childhood tale of being utterly deprived of ever having played on a Slip 'n Slide, so the kiddo is the first member of our immediate family to be lucky enough to do so, and on one of her very own to boot! She was begging both of us to go with her, but the very scary warning printed right at the start of the plastic convinced any part of me that was still longing to try it, even just once, that I'm about 30 years too late (and several pounds too heavy) for that. Bummer.
Now, it seems from our (admittedly hazy) recollections from back in the day that the Slip 'n Slide engineering has greatly improved over the decades. What Hubby and I recall was little more than a long strip of plastic that those fortunate children who owned one would complain about tearing and getting punctured very easily. Now, it has a bumper-surrounded catching area at the end, as well as a row of pretty serious sprinklers down the side (which we didn't remember being a feature back in the 70s, but may've in fact been. Like I said, we were both deprived. I seem to remember it just being wet by the hose, but no arcing sprinkler action.)
While I was inside liberally slathering sunscreen on the kiddo, Hubby set up the Slip 'n Slide, angling it along the natural slope of our back yard and checking the underside area for sharp and/or pointy things. As our grass is presently in need of a trim, I think there was more cushioning than there otherwise might've been between the plastic and our hard, hard clay soil, so not a bad thing. Having it head downhill also helped improve the kiddo's sliding potential, of course. She couldn't wait to get sliding. Unfortunately, she really didn't want to attempt a running leap-belly flop combination (as we remember from the TV commercials of our youth), so she mostly just got a running start several yards back on the lawn, then continued running once she reached the plastic until she lost her footing and then slid the rest of the way on her behind/back. This was rather hilarious to watch (as evidenced by my giggling and inability to speak in a normal tone of voice from said giggling while trying out our new video camera) and didn't deter her from repeatedly doing the "run until she fell" maneuver, despite a few rather hard landings. I have a feeling she's going to have a sore behind in the morning...
The biggest downside to any water-related activity in our back yard is the lack of hot water capability. I suppose we could run the hose into the house through the window above the kitchen sink and hook it up to some warmer water courtesy of the kitchen tap, but we never have. Every pool, sprinkler and now Slip 'n Slide we've done has featured icy cold water straight from the outside faucet. This means that despite the great amounts of fun one is having and the incredible heat one may be outdoors in at the time, one's teeth eventually start chattering and one's Mean Mommy pulls the plug on the activity in favor of drying off and warming up. This is especially the case when one is recovering from pneumonia, so the Slip 'n Sliding was cut shorter than the kiddo may've liked. Good thing we're heading to the water park tomorrow, which is set to be another scorchingly hot and humid day!
(Oh, a quick petunia basket nest update: Mama Finch is still sitting on the nest, which still features 6 unhatched eggs, which as of this morning's plant watering were all standing on end. Do eggs turn upright as the baby is getting ready to hatch all on their own? Does the mama bird turn them? Will we have baby birdies soon? Stay tuned......)
(Oh, and a PPS - don't know if anyone noticed or not, but I'm not wearing my glasses in the picture above because I was wearing contacts today. Woo! Contacts! My "one month per eye" supply came in yesterday, and now I'm going to have to begin seriously exercising the restraint I promised myself I would in order to make that "one month" stretch out to three or four months, at least. It is too darn expensive to wear contacts every day at the price I have to pay for these. Though I will wear them tomorrow, since we're going to the amusement park......)
(Last PS for this post, I swear. I just spellchecked, as I somehow have a mental block on how to spell the word exercise - oh, the irony - and the spell check indicated that "scorchingly" is not a word. It gave me the option of "scorching" instead, which has me wondering - why isn't "scorchingly" a word? Is it a word and blogger spell check just doesn't get it? Hmmm.)
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Company social event
Hubby has been working for his present company since last September. Since he began working there, the company has had a few different events to which the spouses/partners of employees were invited. There is another such event this coming weekend, as Hubby reminded me this morning.
Now, I'm a very social person. I don't get stressed out by being in a large group or in a group of strangers. I'm outgoing and enjoy social situations. Usually. When it comes to Hubby's coworkers, though, I feel a bit more outside my comfort zone.
The first part of it is, I think, because I've been a stay-at-home mom for the past five years. That's five years in which I've honed my knock-knock jokes, unwittingly memorized the entire Wiggles canon, brushed up on all the Disney princesses and painstakingly learned the pros and cons of every playground in the county, but also five years in which I haven't regularly interacted in an adults-only setting. Combine that with issues like, while pre-Kiddo I used to see, on average, four movies a month in the theater, nowadays we're lucky to see four movies a year in the theater, and that nowadays I catch most of my news and current events either in brief snippets here and there while I'm getting ready for the day (we don't have the TV on while the kiddo is up, outside of her shows, which don't include CNN or Headline News or even the Today show) or via the 5:30am news, at which point I'm not entirely awake - what I'm trying to say is that I've sort of lost my grip on the larger world. Mostly, I'm okay with that. I do read the top stories on CNN.com and try to keep up on pop culture via my beloved Entertainment Weekly, but I've been all right with having my world shrink dramatically to a point where the primary concern and focus is my immediate, little family. All right, that is, until I am in an adults-only social setting, where all of a sudden I feel a wee bit out of my element (unless the talk pertains to anything child-related, of course). Not even so much "out of my element" as just rusty with What Grown-Ups Talk About When Socializing Sans Children. That's what it is - rustiness. My Socializing Grown-Up mode is covered under a thick layer of dust, and that's kind of hard to shake, since that is no longer who I am - I'm not the same me I was before kids, you know? When I'm with a group of my peers, it isn't hard at all - I can chat with fellow parents (generally in a parenting-relative situation, like at preschool or a birthday party, playground or pediatrician's waiting room) and I'm utterly comfortable - there's no dust on Mommy Me. Just on Non-Mommy Me, that's the part that's rusty. So, part of it is that I want to make a good impression and be a supportive spouse, and I feel kind of awkward from having been out of the loop for so long now in that regard, unlike Hubby, who is out and about in the Regular World, talking to other adults every day.
That is part of the stress I feel facing a social event with Hubby's coworkers. More specifically, however, I'm a bit stressed because of the Peppercorn Incident. (cue horror movie music here please) It happened back on my birthday this past December. My birthday, which happened to be the same date as Hubby's company's holiday party. It was a swank affair, held at a gorgeously decorated country club (ironically, a country club where I once job coached an individual for my pre-Mommy life working in supported employment - I know where each of the tables, chairs and tablecloths we were sitting around is stored down in the bowels of the building...). There was great food, an open bar, music. Hubby and I were dressed up and looking good, heck, I even had make-up and earrings and heels on that night, woo! The party was crowded, and we made it through the cocktail hour without problem, but then I was almost done in by the Peppercorn of Death during dinner. They were carving beef tenderloin for one of the entrees, and if I'm given the choice, I'm gonna go beef just about every time, especially given that we rarely have beef in any variety other than "ground" at home. I was given what turned out to be the very end of one of the tenderloins, and we sat down and started to eat, just the two of us at a table for four. (There wasn't assigned seating and we couldn't find seats at any of the larger tables of eight. This turned out to be not such a bad thing, in light of what happened next...) So, I'm enjoying the delish tenderloin and then I bit into my very last bite, which is the very end of the very end piece, and I bit down on something crunchy. My first thought was it was a bit of gristle or something, but it turned out to be a peppercorn (from the peppercorn-encrusted tenderloin, dontcha know) but not just a little flake of peppercorn, oh no. It was a whole peppercorn sent straight from Satan to torment unsuspecting birthday girls. I bit into it and my mouth was immediately on fire, so what did I do? Not the inelegant thing of spitting it out, no, not this classy broad. Instead, I tried to swallow it as quickly as possible, whereupon it cackled evilly a la Vincent Price in Thriller and attached itself firmly to the back of my throat, behind my uvula. It had sharp, piercing spikes with which it embedded itself, and it had no intentions of going any further. It wasn't obstructing my airway or anything, so I could breathe - sort of - it was just stuck there, sending tendrils of fire up into my sinuses and down my throat. (I should point out here that I never, ever eat anything spicy. Hubby has taste-tested for me for the past 16 years, and if he isn't available, I err on the side of caution and don't eat it. Seriously - to give you an example, Taco Bell's mild sauce is waaay too hot for me. My stomach just can't take spicy food, so I avoid it like the plague. An ordinary, spicy-foods-eating person probably wouldn't have found this peppercorn particularly strong, but for me, it was like a habanero chili pepper.) Water didn't do anything to dislodge it, and I didn't feel like I could really swallow (Hubby was suggesting trying to wash it down with some of my mashed potatoes), so I excused myself to the ladies' room to try and cough it up.
I am telling you, all of Hubby's coworkers must now think I am the world's least successful bulimic, because it took three separate trips to the bathroom, where I sequestered myself in a stall trying to hack that Peppercorn of Death up, before I finally did. Tres elegant, non? Once I'd finally, finally dislodged the damn thing, I was fine and hurried back to rejoin Hubby as quickly as I could. Adding insult to injury, I failed to check myself closely enough in the mirror post-coughing-and-hacking in my haste to get back out to where I'd left Hubby languishing alone at our table, and didn't realize that all my eye-watering, coughing, sweating shenanigans in the ladies' room had left me a bit of a mess. In an attempt to make up for the time lost where Hubby was left spouseless and alone, I went into super-social mode for the remainder of the evening, never realizing that my mascara had run into raccoon-like smears under my eyes, my lipstick was mostly gone, and I was sweaty and red-faced to boot. I can only guess that the folks we chatted with from that point on must've thought I was seriously drunk, which is all the more unfortunate as I rarely drink alcohol at all and was as sober as could be. (I've only ever been drunk to the point of being tipsy, and that was back in my not-very-wild-n-crazy college days. I'm so not a par-tay! kind of girl.) I was, to put it plainly, a hot mess, a fact I did not realize until we arrived home at the oh-so-not-partying-heartily hour of 11:00pm. (Which, sadly, is now late enough of an evening for us that we both needed naps the next day. Back in college, we wouldn't be heading out for the evening until close to 11:00, nowadays we are usually sound asleep by 10...)
So, I have a bit of stress now that I am going to be seeing these same people again on Saturday, plus the fact that the event is being held at our local amusement park, which has a water park and it is supposed to be in the 90s, so the kiddo will want to go in the water park. You see where I'm going with this? Yep, a public bathing suit situation, with people I'd otherwise be trying to impress - eeeeek!
All in all, though, I'm not going to worry too much and just enjoy myself on Saturday. I mean, I can't undo what happened with the Peppercorn of Death at the holiday party, and I doubt many (any?) of the other party goers have given it or me much thought since then. Hopefully I will be able to be adequately witty and charming and avoid something like choking on a hot dog or barfing from motion sickness on the Spinning Teacups or having a Boobs-a-Blazin' incident with my bathing suit on a water slide............ To quote one of my sister's favorite expressions, it is what it is and I can only try to be fantabulous from here on out. Right?
Now, I'm a very social person. I don't get stressed out by being in a large group or in a group of strangers. I'm outgoing and enjoy social situations. Usually. When it comes to Hubby's coworkers, though, I feel a bit more outside my comfort zone.
The first part of it is, I think, because I've been a stay-at-home mom for the past five years. That's five years in which I've honed my knock-knock jokes, unwittingly memorized the entire Wiggles canon, brushed up on all the Disney princesses and painstakingly learned the pros and cons of every playground in the county, but also five years in which I haven't regularly interacted in an adults-only setting. Combine that with issues like, while pre-Kiddo I used to see, on average, four movies a month in the theater, nowadays we're lucky to see four movies a year in the theater, and that nowadays I catch most of my news and current events either in brief snippets here and there while I'm getting ready for the day (we don't have the TV on while the kiddo is up, outside of her shows, which don't include CNN or Headline News or even the Today show) or via the 5:30am news, at which point I'm not entirely awake - what I'm trying to say is that I've sort of lost my grip on the larger world. Mostly, I'm okay with that. I do read the top stories on CNN.com and try to keep up on pop culture via my beloved Entertainment Weekly, but I've been all right with having my world shrink dramatically to a point where the primary concern and focus is my immediate, little family. All right, that is, until I am in an adults-only social setting, where all of a sudden I feel a wee bit out of my element (unless the talk pertains to anything child-related, of course). Not even so much "out of my element" as just rusty with What Grown-Ups Talk About When Socializing Sans Children. That's what it is - rustiness. My Socializing Grown-Up mode is covered under a thick layer of dust, and that's kind of hard to shake, since that is no longer who I am - I'm not the same me I was before kids, you know? When I'm with a group of my peers, it isn't hard at all - I can chat with fellow parents (generally in a parenting-relative situation, like at preschool or a birthday party, playground or pediatrician's waiting room) and I'm utterly comfortable - there's no dust on Mommy Me. Just on Non-Mommy Me, that's the part that's rusty. So, part of it is that I want to make a good impression and be a supportive spouse, and I feel kind of awkward from having been out of the loop for so long now in that regard, unlike Hubby, who is out and about in the Regular World, talking to other adults every day.
That is part of the stress I feel facing a social event with Hubby's coworkers. More specifically, however, I'm a bit stressed because of the Peppercorn Incident. (cue horror movie music here please) It happened back on my birthday this past December. My birthday, which happened to be the same date as Hubby's company's holiday party. It was a swank affair, held at a gorgeously decorated country club (ironically, a country club where I once job coached an individual for my pre-Mommy life working in supported employment - I know where each of the tables, chairs and tablecloths we were sitting around is stored down in the bowels of the building...). There was great food, an open bar, music. Hubby and I were dressed up and looking good, heck, I even had make-up and earrings and heels on that night, woo! The party was crowded, and we made it through the cocktail hour without problem, but then I was almost done in by the Peppercorn of Death during dinner. They were carving beef tenderloin for one of the entrees, and if I'm given the choice, I'm gonna go beef just about every time, especially given that we rarely have beef in any variety other than "ground" at home. I was given what turned out to be the very end of one of the tenderloins, and we sat down and started to eat, just the two of us at a table for four. (There wasn't assigned seating and we couldn't find seats at any of the larger tables of eight. This turned out to be not such a bad thing, in light of what happened next...) So, I'm enjoying the delish tenderloin and then I bit into my very last bite, which is the very end of the very end piece, and I bit down on something crunchy. My first thought was it was a bit of gristle or something, but it turned out to be a peppercorn (from the peppercorn-encrusted tenderloin, dontcha know) but not just a little flake of peppercorn, oh no. It was a whole peppercorn sent straight from Satan to torment unsuspecting birthday girls. I bit into it and my mouth was immediately on fire, so what did I do? Not the inelegant thing of spitting it out, no, not this classy broad. Instead, I tried to swallow it as quickly as possible, whereupon it cackled evilly a la Vincent Price in Thriller and attached itself firmly to the back of my throat, behind my uvula. It had sharp, piercing spikes with which it embedded itself, and it had no intentions of going any further. It wasn't obstructing my airway or anything, so I could breathe - sort of - it was just stuck there, sending tendrils of fire up into my sinuses and down my throat. (I should point out here that I never, ever eat anything spicy. Hubby has taste-tested for me for the past 16 years, and if he isn't available, I err on the side of caution and don't eat it. Seriously - to give you an example, Taco Bell's mild sauce is waaay too hot for me. My stomach just can't take spicy food, so I avoid it like the plague. An ordinary, spicy-foods-eating person probably wouldn't have found this peppercorn particularly strong, but for me, it was like a habanero chili pepper.) Water didn't do anything to dislodge it, and I didn't feel like I could really swallow (Hubby was suggesting trying to wash it down with some of my mashed potatoes), so I excused myself to the ladies' room to try and cough it up.
I am telling you, all of Hubby's coworkers must now think I am the world's least successful bulimic, because it took three separate trips to the bathroom, where I sequestered myself in a stall trying to hack that Peppercorn of Death up, before I finally did. Tres elegant, non? Once I'd finally, finally dislodged the damn thing, I was fine and hurried back to rejoin Hubby as quickly as I could. Adding insult to injury, I failed to check myself closely enough in the mirror post-coughing-and-hacking in my haste to get back out to where I'd left Hubby languishing alone at our table, and didn't realize that all my eye-watering, coughing, sweating shenanigans in the ladies' room had left me a bit of a mess. In an attempt to make up for the time lost where Hubby was left spouseless and alone, I went into super-social mode for the remainder of the evening, never realizing that my mascara had run into raccoon-like smears under my eyes, my lipstick was mostly gone, and I was sweaty and red-faced to boot. I can only guess that the folks we chatted with from that point on must've thought I was seriously drunk, which is all the more unfortunate as I rarely drink alcohol at all and was as sober as could be. (I've only ever been drunk to the point of being tipsy, and that was back in my not-very-wild-n-crazy college days. I'm so not a par-tay! kind of girl.) I was, to put it plainly, a hot mess, a fact I did not realize until we arrived home at the oh-so-not-partying-heartily hour of 11:00pm. (Which, sadly, is now late enough of an evening for us that we both needed naps the next day. Back in college, we wouldn't be heading out for the evening until close to 11:00, nowadays we are usually sound asleep by 10...)
So, I have a bit of stress now that I am going to be seeing these same people again on Saturday, plus the fact that the event is being held at our local amusement park, which has a water park and it is supposed to be in the 90s, so the kiddo will want to go in the water park. You see where I'm going with this? Yep, a public bathing suit situation, with people I'd otherwise be trying to impress - eeeeek!
All in all, though, I'm not going to worry too much and just enjoy myself on Saturday. I mean, I can't undo what happened with the Peppercorn of Death at the holiday party, and I doubt many (any?) of the other party goers have given it or me much thought since then. Hopefully I will be able to be adequately witty and charming and avoid something like choking on a hot dog or barfing from motion sickness on the Spinning Teacups or having a Boobs-a-Blazin' incident with my bathing suit on a water slide............ To quote one of my sister's favorite expressions, it is what it is and I can only try to be fantabulous from here on out. Right?
Germies update
So, the cough, fever and Niagara Falls Nostrils that the kiddo has right now? Turns out, it's pneumonia. !!! We learned this after a visit to the pediatrician followed by a visit to the hospital for a chest x-ray, followed by a trip to the pharmacy for some groovy, kick-ass antibiotic. Unfortunately, those three stops took us well over five hours when all was said and done, which was plenty of time for the kiddo's morning ibuprofen dose to wear off and for her fever to spike anew, causing her to become one cranky, miserable kid. I almost lost it at the pharmacy when we arrived to find that the prescription had not yet been filled, nor even sent to them, and then spent twenty minutes on hold with my doctor's office without a single, live person picking up to find out where exactly the prescription was... Thankfully while I was draining my cell phone battery listening to "Your call is important to us. We appreciate your patience. Please remain on the line and your call will be answered in the order it was received" the prescription was eventually faxed over and then filled. Whew. Neither of us particularly ever want to see any waiting room bench again anytime soon, that's for sure! But, now that she's had her first dose o' azithromycin and another dose of ibuprofen, she's perked right back up again.
Pneumonia. For crying out loud. What's next, bubonic plague? Yeesh!!!
Pneumonia. For crying out loud. What's next, bubonic plague? Yeesh!!!
As the petunia basket turns...
Okay, I spent a lot of time yesterday afternoon stalking and trying to get a picture of Mama bird, and I am now certain that the sparrow I caught at the bird feeder is not the bird that is sitting on the nest.
Unfortunately, this is the best shot I could get of Mama on the nest. I had to take it from inside the house with the window closed, because if I do anything else, even just try to photograph her through the open window, she flies away and gets really irked - cheeping and cheeping from what she deems a safe distance. Apparently Mama bird isn't yet ready for her close-up...
If I had CSI or Law & Order technology, I could put that shot into some computer program and with a few keystrokes, be able to "enhance" it to the point where we could see every detail of her smallest feather and probably even do a DNA analysis, but I am a mere mortal with a not-terribly-fancy digital camera and not-very-advanced PhotoShop skills. I also tried to catch a shot of Mama bird after she had flown away and landed on the neighbor's roof:
Based on these two pictures and the fact that Papa bird defintely resembles the house finch picture I found online, I'm feeling pretty sure that (a) the Mama and Papa are both house finches - though that one, larger egg doesn't appear to be (see Nora's comments in the post below, and thanks Nora for your sleuthing!) and (b) at this point, the house finches are still in control of the nest. I have noticed sparrows in the general area, and given last year's similar egg configuration in the nest, I'm guessing that the bad end to the baby birdies last year was due to the sparrow ultimately taking over the nest. Evil sparrow.
We're not going anywhere today as the kiddo has brewed up her first batch of 5 year old germies (nasty, wet cough, Niagara Falls nostrils and most worryingly, a fever of almost 103 this morning) unless we head over to the pediatrician for a "listen to the lungs" check, and it is pouring rain out, so I'm guessing Mama bird will stick close to the nest. I am going to try to get a better picture of her, and if I do, I'll post it. Also, if the weather worsens, I'll have to take down the baskets (so they don't blow over) and if I do, I'll take a picture of any egg-hatching developments. I didn't take the basket down yesterday as I'm trying to disturb it as little as possible. Stay tuned for further chapters of As the Petunia Basket Turns...........
Unfortunately, this is the best shot I could get of Mama on the nest. I had to take it from inside the house with the window closed, because if I do anything else, even just try to photograph her through the open window, she flies away and gets really irked - cheeping and cheeping from what she deems a safe distance. Apparently Mama bird isn't yet ready for her close-up...
If I had CSI or Law & Order technology, I could put that shot into some computer program and with a few keystrokes, be able to "enhance" it to the point where we could see every detail of her smallest feather and probably even do a DNA analysis, but I am a mere mortal with a not-terribly-fancy digital camera and not-very-advanced PhotoShop skills. I also tried to catch a shot of Mama bird after she had flown away and landed on the neighbor's roof:
Based on these two pictures and the fact that Papa bird defintely resembles the house finch picture I found online, I'm feeling pretty sure that (a) the Mama and Papa are both house finches - though that one, larger egg doesn't appear to be (see Nora's comments in the post below, and thanks Nora for your sleuthing!) and (b) at this point, the house finches are still in control of the nest. I have noticed sparrows in the general area, and given last year's similar egg configuration in the nest, I'm guessing that the bad end to the baby birdies last year was due to the sparrow ultimately taking over the nest. Evil sparrow.
We're not going anywhere today as the kiddo has brewed up her first batch of 5 year old germies (nasty, wet cough, Niagara Falls nostrils and most worryingly, a fever of almost 103 this morning) unless we head over to the pediatrician for a "listen to the lungs" check, and it is pouring rain out, so I'm guessing Mama bird will stick close to the nest. I am going to try to get a better picture of her, and if I do, I'll post it. Also, if the weather worsens, I'll have to take down the baskets (so they don't blow over) and if I do, I'll take a picture of any egg-hatching developments. I didn't take the basket down yesterday as I'm trying to disturb it as little as possible. Stay tuned for further chapters of As the Petunia Basket Turns...........
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Eggciting update...
The petunia basket nest is up to SIX eggs! 
I've been trying to surreptitiously snap a photo of Mama Bird on her nest, but she is awfully camera-shy. I did, however, get this shot of her (from a distance and stretching the zoom function of my digital camera to its maximum capability) as she dined at one of our backyard feeders. Well, I'm 99.9% certain it is Mama Bird - she flew out of the basket and over the house, and I raced back there to find this one bird stopping at the feeder.
Do the bird-expert blog readers out there still think this is a house finch family, based upon the pics of the nest and the presumed Mama Bird? Anyone? Bueller? I just wonder at the one, much larger egg in the nest with all the other smaller, more uniform-looking eggs...
Whew!!!
Well, the party is over... Yesterday dawned gray and unsettled, with impressively threatening clouds lurking just to our west and ominous blobs on the weather radar map. Hubby and I headed over to the park ahead of time to get stuff set up, which is where we encountered the brisk wind as we began moving tables into party configurations and hanging up decorations, etc. By brisk, I mean "strong enough to rip the painstakingly and thoroughly stapled-down tablecloths right off the table" and also strong enough that we had to abandon our more lavish decorating plan (for which we had something around 1600 feet of crepe paper streamers) for a few, somewhat less festive streamers wrapped around the pavilion posts and nary a balloon in sight. Hubby even stapled the cake board to the table and stapled the chip bowls to the tables where the guests would be eating. (Thank goodness we found the staple gun, which had been missing - we went through several hundred staples in under half an hour getting things set up!) The sun made a brief appearance, just long enough to raise our hopes, before disappearing behind the evil storm clouds as the wind kicked it up another few notches and off in the distance, we heard a rumble or two of thunder. I was so nervous as I headed home to collect the birthday girl, her cousins and aunt (who were in town for their annual visit this past weekend). All I could think was "I don't know that I'd take the kiddo to an outdoor party with weather like that - what if no one shows?" I loaded up the van and we headed back out to the park.
I am still in shock about what happened next. At the very dot of 11:00 when the party was scheduled to start, the clouds parted, the sky turned blue and the sun came out. The wind died back down to a strongish breeze and, I kid you not, birds started singing. It was unbelievably good weather, and it lasted for the duration of the party. The guests arrived and everyone headed over to the playground, where they had a grand time. (Seriously, this is an awesome playground. It makes me want to go back to being five myself just so I could play on it.) We wound up with 20 kids, plus parents. Three families who had RSVPed didn't make it, and I only hope they didn't get so lost on their way out to the park that they gave up and/or are still driving about the wilds of western NY... The pizza delivery dude rolled up at 11:58 with our order, piping hot and surprisingly delicious. (We'd never had pizza from this place before; our only criteria for the party being will they deliver to the park, do we have coupons and are they open early enough on a Saturday. So, for it to taste as good as it did was a huge bonus, especially since we had an entire sheet left over, now saran-wrapped in our chest freezer.)
Other than a small issue with getting the candles on the birthday cake to light (that dang brisk breeze again) and the piñata not quite pouring forth even after the pull-streamer that opens it was pulled (one of the other moms wound up standing on a bench and shaking the piñata to get the loot to fall out), everything went really, really well. We played a few of the "in case it rains and we can't go on the playground" back-up games, which were quite fun (despite the birthday girl cheating by peeking out from the bottom of the blindfold during pin the tail on the donkey) and the kids all were thrilled with the temporary dinosaur tattoos that my sister had brought and applied to arms, hands and legs as requested. (I'm sporting a T. Rex on my left ankle now, myself - I'm so kewl!)
As the party ended and the very last guest was pulling out of the park, the skies clouded over again and the rain began to fall. It was like something out of a movie (or perhaps a bad TV movie) the way that the weather suddenly improved and held just long enough before going back to its regularly scheduled nastiness. Anyone who did rain dances or otherwise influenced Mother Nature for us, a heartfelt thanks, because they worked! The kiddo had a great time, her friends had a great time, I think even the parents enjoyed themselves, and we will never, ever do a party of that size again. (Kindly remind me I just said that if I develop amnesia between now and next May!) Hubby and I are still exhausted 24 hours and one tetanus shot later (he caught his forearm on a rusty nail while moving the tables back after the party, ow) and I've come to the conclusion that I'm too old for a five year old's birthday party! *yawn* Now I've just got to sort through and print out the many, many pictures we took (and Hubby is busily working on editing the video footage from our brand spankin' new digital video camera) and we'll get the kiddo to write her thank-you notes and then this year's birthday celebrations will be history! (Um, except for the leftover pizza and cake, which may be with us for a while longer.)
I am still in shock about what happened next. At the very dot of 11:00 when the party was scheduled to start, the clouds parted, the sky turned blue and the sun came out. The wind died back down to a strongish breeze and, I kid you not, birds started singing. It was unbelievably good weather, and it lasted for the duration of the party. The guests arrived and everyone headed over to the playground, where they had a grand time. (Seriously, this is an awesome playground. It makes me want to go back to being five myself just so I could play on it.) We wound up with 20 kids, plus parents. Three families who had RSVPed didn't make it, and I only hope they didn't get so lost on their way out to the park that they gave up and/or are still driving about the wilds of western NY... The pizza delivery dude rolled up at 11:58 with our order, piping hot and surprisingly delicious. (We'd never had pizza from this place before; our only criteria for the party being will they deliver to the park, do we have coupons and are they open early enough on a Saturday. So, for it to taste as good as it did was a huge bonus, especially since we had an entire sheet left over, now saran-wrapped in our chest freezer.)
Other than a small issue with getting the candles on the birthday cake to light (that dang brisk breeze again) and the piñata not quite pouring forth even after the pull-streamer that opens it was pulled (one of the other moms wound up standing on a bench and shaking the piñata to get the loot to fall out), everything went really, really well. We played a few of the "in case it rains and we can't go on the playground" back-up games, which were quite fun (despite the birthday girl cheating by peeking out from the bottom of the blindfold during pin the tail on the donkey) and the kids all were thrilled with the temporary dinosaur tattoos that my sister had brought and applied to arms, hands and legs as requested. (I'm sporting a T. Rex on my left ankle now, myself - I'm so kewl!)
As the party ended and the very last guest was pulling out of the park, the skies clouded over again and the rain began to fall. It was like something out of a movie (or perhaps a bad TV movie) the way that the weather suddenly improved and held just long enough before going back to its regularly scheduled nastiness. Anyone who did rain dances or otherwise influenced Mother Nature for us, a heartfelt thanks, because they worked! The kiddo had a great time, her friends had a great time, I think even the parents enjoyed themselves, and we will never, ever do a party of that size again. (Kindly remind me I just said that if I develop amnesia between now and next May!) Hubby and I are still exhausted 24 hours and one tetanus shot later (he caught his forearm on a rusty nail while moving the tables back after the party, ow) and I've come to the conclusion that I'm too old for a five year old's birthday party! *yawn* Now I've just got to sort through and print out the many, many pictures we took (and Hubby is busily working on editing the video footage from our brand spankin' new digital video camera) and we'll get the kiddo to write her thank-you notes and then this year's birthday celebrations will be history! (Um, except for the leftover pizza and cake, which may be with us for a while longer.)
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