-3 Degrees

That was the actual temperature when I put on my boots, leather gloves, and pulled up my hood to go out to top up the birdbath and sprinkle seed on the birdie tree.  I might have also walked our one bag of garbage out to the end of the driveway to put it into the neighbors' bin, maybe... because I was too tired and too cold to drag our bin out over the snowblower.  Dammit, I wish we either had a bigger garage or Durwood's van wasn't as big so I could just roll it out and not have to horse it over or move the snowblower first.  *wah, wah, wah*

The other day LC and I watched a little male Downy Woodpecker peck, peck, pecking at the frozen suet.  She was pretty transfixed.  We saw one posing on the peanut wreath too, but she especially liked counting the Mourning Doves and watching the flock of sparrows flutter into the birdie tree to be out of the wind and have a snack.  She was hoping to see a Cardinal but one didn't come.  There was also a hawk perched in the bare apple tree surveying the buffet but it flew away to greener pastures.  Or maybe it had a hankering for a mouse instead of a bird for lunch.
 











She's a big fan of the squirrels too.  She asked me to sing "the corn song" but I didn't know a corn song and didn't remember "Jimmy Cracked Corn" at that moment, so I made one up.  It's two rousing choruses of "the corn song, the corn song, squirrels like to eat corn."  I don't know where the melody came from but by the time I took her home she was singing "the corn song" in the back seat.  I guess that means I get to add "songwriter" to my resume.  *snort*

I did go to the store yesterday afternoon for soup makings and taco makings for the weekend.  Of course, this morning I realized I forgot the lettuce for the tacos but I have time for that.  I made a vat of Chicken & Greens Soup before supper.  After supper I spilled nearly a quart of it all down two cupboards and onto the just-cleaned-by-the-cleaner-that-morning floor.  See, I put it into stand-up quart freezer bags and it was still a bit hot to close so I set it, securely I thought, on the counter but I was wrong.  *WAH*  So I got to wipe down the cupboards and two drawers, clean the spatters off the wall and dishwasher, and rescrub the floor.  I was thrilled with myself.  I might have shed a few rueful tears as I scrubbed.

January 13--M. Roemer, Dakota Stock Images, Glad You're Mind, Couple, Happy, Togetherness, Security.  Stacy opened the card.  She stared at the message on the front.  It said, "So Glad..." and then there was a long list of words and phrases each with a check box next to it.  They said things like "you're mine" and "you're happy."  There was "we're together", "you're feeling better" but farther down the list it said "you're gone."  She wondered how long Ed had stood in the card aisle at the cut-rate card store looking for the right card and what had made him think this one was it.  To top it off he hadn't checked any of the boxes or, she checked inside, signed it.

One good thing about it being so cold is I get to wear my heavy, red, wool sweater to work today.  It's such a warm thing it has to be really cold to be comfy.
--Barbara