Birds and more Birds
When I met Elaine a few years ago (It was more than a few) she revealed to me she was afraid of birds. It turned out she was more than afraid of birds, she was terrified. Using all the psychological skills I picked up at public school, I was never able to determine if she was in fact terrified of birds or if she was terrified of Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds".
In fairness, I guess I should admit, I don't like witches. Watching "The Wizard of Oz" as a child, left me with scars that I carry to this day. That's a story for another day.
Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" scared the living (construction language) out of Elaine. This was never more apparent than the day we took our first batch of kids to the Denver Zoo. Elaine went screaming and running in front of our children and a few thousand citizens of Denver, trying to get away from a peacock. A peaceful, bright blue, slow-walking peacock that had the misfortune of wanting to share the sidewalk with people enjoying the zoo.
This might have been the first time our children heard (construction language) as several people on the sidewalk yelled, "What the (construction language)".
I can't say how, or even why, but Elaine conquered her fear of birds, but she has. Elaine is now fascinated with birds. I do have a couple of theories as to why things changed. First, I think it coincides with our move to the country. She was able to see that birds don't gang up and kill people. Second, also relates to our move from the city. Across the road from us, lives a guy who happens/happened (now retired) to be a regional head of the Audubon Society. I don't want to give him credit, but after talking to him and living here, Elaine started studying birds. She bought books and software. She bought bird feeders, hummingbird feeders, oriole feeders, and bags of seed. It was a good thing we both had jobs......and a yarn store.
Elaine was soon able to identify the bird, including their nests around our home. I don't like to complain, OK maybe I do, but you don't know what it's like to be concentrating on driving and Elaiine yells, "Look, there is an Osprey nest!"
I was not blameless in this transformation. You can include our daughter in that also. Last Christmas, our daughter found a bird feeder/camera that snaps a close-up photo or video of the bird at the feeder. Needless to say, Elaine loved it. We didn't get it set up correctly until recently. Turns out you need to be a grandchild or computer science wiz to set it up. This (construction language) thing sends photos and videos to phones and computers.
Boy Twin set it up to send the photos. In the meantime, Elaine purchased an attachment that allows the camera to attract and photograph hummingbirds. Back comes BoyTwin. He set up the hummingbird camera to send the video to his phone, Elaine's phone, and even my phone.
We have a lot of hummingbirds around our house. I did say a lot, didn't I? Elaine has been feeding them for years. Now this feeder/camera is sending videos to our phones every sixty seconds or so. Boy Twin fixed it so it would stop on his phone the first day. But not mine or Elaine's. Do you see a problem here? Boy Twin will be here sometime this coming week to fix my problem.
This is the time when I ask you to buy yarn. I'm not going to do that yet. I have another story. This past week Elaine asked me to deliver four skeins of yarn to a long-time customer in town. I did that, I delivered four skeins of yarn. One skein was actually a skein the customer wanted. Elaine needs to keep an eye on me and leave the birds alone.
Buy yarn. Love ya, God Bless
Our crazy lives!
Monner
