Beloved Duties

My AC adaptor on my Mac fried a few days ago so I'm stuck blogging without pictures - not to mention I have to use this PC (my fingers get hives when I use it).

A week ago I realized I've been in my calling longer than anyone else in the ward (except the Bishop). It's been a little over 3 years. Don't get me wrong, I adore my job... it was just something I noticed.

I mentioned this to someone who has my same job in a different ward (congregation) and she chuckled. She told me she's been doing it for seven years.

What?!

Neighborhood Bully

I need some advice.

We have neighbors that have two cats. One stays inside their home (I've never actually seen it), and the other [collar-less one] stays out; stays out to pick up diseases that cause it to have bald spots, eat squirrel food left out by our elderly neighbors, jump into your car if the doors open, but most despicable: to poop in my yard.

I have even found it in my house.... walking out of my BEDROOM!

I hate this cat.

A lot.

Here is my problem: WHAT DO I DO ABOUT IT?

I've already asked someone at animal control. They've said they're low-staffed so they only come out on dangerous/serious animal cases. She told me I could catch it and bring it in myself, but I'd rather not touch the thing. I spent 3 hours cleaning my room after "the incident".  After all, I'm allergic.

Do I go over and explain that I think it's unfair that we all have to deal with getting ringworm (yes, some kid on the street got ringworm last year) from their cat because they don't keep it inside? That I'm growing weary of flinging cat poop over the fence at their house? This conversation would seem like the neighborly thing to do.

The problem with this scenario is that they both work and I'm afraid they aren't going to do anything about the cat then things will get really awkward because

I'm going to have to kill it, 
(because I will) 
and then they'll know who did it.

Block parties just won't be the same after that.

So I ask you: What would you do?

Now, what if I told you it ate one of my little birds?

Here's a question: Would it change your opinion if it were a dog?

Tweet

We've had some friends move in with us. They're loud and smelly.

See these vents?

The one on the left is for my dryer. The one on the right is the stove's vent. (Should I clarify that they're not in the same room?). They seem to both have a cover, but the one on the right seems propped open somehow.

LEFT VENT

RIGHT VENT

We could tell birds had moved in about two months ago. We thought we'd eventually get to it (secretly hoping they'd just move out), but then about three weeks ago we heard lots of little chirping.

Eggs had hatched.

Again we hoped that they'd just find a new home until Friday when the chirping got really, really loud. I felt like an aviary was in the middle of our house. A loud aviary with a hundred hungry chirping beaks.

To fully understand this, our microwave is above our stove so the duct work is in a cupboard above the microwave. I decided to be neighborly and bang on the metal duct work and yell something like, "keep it down in there!", but I saw this....

(Those are feathers!...IN MY CUPBOARD!!!)

When I stopped hyperventilating, I texted Steven these three seperate messages:

1) The birds are IN THE HOUSE! (I wanted it to relay the same feeling as "the call is coming from inside the house"...it didn't work.)

(No response from Steven -- I gave him a full 30 seconds to respond, too!)

2) What the H am I supposed to do?!

(Still no response. It had been at least 1 min 17 sec)

3) STOP LAUGHING!

('Cause I just knew....Jerk.)

He FINALLY called (2 minutes later!) and asked me if I knew what kind of bird it was? was it the mama or the babies? were they trying to get out? Since I had only seen a bit of feathers and hadn't dared open the cupboard entirely, I took my best guess and said I thought it might be an dark gray albatross (those exist right?) or a near relation of godzilla.

When he stopped laugh/crying he told me to just wait until he got home and he'd take care of it. Here's is the rest of the story in pictures.









Steven thought the birds might get out of the box (or worse, a cat might get in). He sort of looked at me expectantly and I said, "It's not like I have a birdhouse!"

He looked at me like I was insane and calmly said, "uh, you have 5 in the living room."

Oh ya.
This is a bad picture, but if you look close you can see Mama bird bringing her little ones food still.

Remember Harry and Moses?

Remember my adorable wreathe nest?

Remember Charlotte?

I'm sure there have been more, but this has been the smelliest, raucous bunch of wildlife we've ever been forced to adopt.

Really smelly.

North Carolina

Steven and I got away for our 10 year anniversary which doesn't actually happen until October (let's hope we can make it that long, right?).

Let me start by saying it had just snowed the previous week. Everything was still dead and gray from a long winter and all we could say was how beautiful North Carolina was. We could totally live there.

Well, not here of course. This is the Biltmore in Asheville. The largest private home in America. It was finished in 1905 by the Vanderbilt family. It's the same house in the movie Richie Rich. There are 4 acres of house there...they didn't even bother telling us the square footage.

The grounds were just as impressive with a farm, winery, and miles of hiking, rivers and ponds.

We made friends at the farm on located on the grounds.

We did a lot of hiking while we were in North Carolina.
This is one of the many trails we were on.

We were able to stay with Chris and Jenny J* (congrats on the new baby!). My one huge regret from the trip was not taking any pictures when we together!

Thanks to Mama and Papa Mick!
We couldn't have gone if it weren't for you.

Mother's Day Irony

Is it weird to anyone else that for Mother's Day we typically give our mother a break from that which we're supposedly celebrating.

Really we should be giving them extra children and dishes and laundry.

But since my family gets irony,
I slept in and had breakfast in bed.

Bradley's Bite

This is why we stick to pet fish....

Bradley was outside when our neighbor came over with his horsedog. I'm pretty sure that's a real breed. The dog got "excited" and likes to "play rough". Uh, good thing he had a shirt on when it happened.

Bradley's Baptism

I've had all these great blog ideas but lost my camera with all of my pictures still on it so I didn't have any good illustrations. You gotta have illustrations! I finally remembered I had placed it under the driver's seat in my car. Weird place, I know. It's because there's this rule that you can't bring a recording device into court and I had to leave it somewhere "not on my person".

That's a different blog entry.

Anyway, here are pics from Bradley's birthday/baptism celebrations.

Bradley and Steven before the baptism.

We have awesome friends and family!

Bradley growing impatient to blow out the candles.