On the DL: My left thumb.

I thought I needed the tip of my thumb for knitting, but it turns out that I can hold it out of the way and still get yarn around needles (I'm not so sure this would work with continental style). I've found this out because on Monday night I was going to town putting vinyl tile down in the utility room and cut myself with a sharp new linoleum knife while trying to trim down an odd-sized piece. This is (hopefully) the conclusion of the new-floor project that was begun late last summer, after Orange Boy polluted the ratty old parquet floor. It's far from perfectly installed, but it looks better than what was there before.

In other domestic news, we have a hummingbird family living under our roof, we're about to have a big influx of in-laws, and I'm drugging my cat.

There's a pair of nestlings in a hummingbird nest under the eaves next to our bathroom window, so we have an OK, albeit backlit, view of the nest. We've been watching the mom for about three weeks, and about a week ago we saw two small, pointy beaks poking out of the nest. They're getting bigger by the day, and sometimes we see the mom feeding them. Unfortunately, the nest is in a terrible location to photograph, so I'm not likely to get any decent pictures. I did take pictures of fledging hummingbirds in our magnolia tree several years ago, but they're analog. I was a mushy, soppy, weepy mess the day those babies left the nest--you'd have thought I brooded them myself.

The imminent arrival of houseguests is kind of a kick in the pants to finish a few house projects, like the floor.  The in-laws will be in town because one of Jane's nieces is graduating from college in a couple of weeks, and another niece is attending her college orientation. Various family members will be staying with us for varying numbers of nights, and we'll be spending a night in the South Bay to make sure we arrive at the graduation birght and early. Can you tell that I'm excited?

And yes, I made good on my promise to start the cranky old man on Prozac. Now he gets a quarter of a human pill every evening and he seems a bit less cranky. We don't think he's sprayed since, but all of his favorite spots are still inaccessible to him most of the time, so it's hard to say the drugs are doing the trick. You don't know what fun is until you try jamming a tiny, crumbly, bitter-tasting pill fragment down a cat's gullet. One side effect is that he seems to hate me less. He doesn't scream at me as much and he's back to sitting on my lap or perching next to me on the couch. Which is nice, because I kind of missed his hairy, dandruffy ass.

Comments

[Richard Guerry Pirtle]

Love your blog Becca, you've got a great writing style. Your part of the story where you'll have to drug your cat to keep the hummingbird family alive made me laugh out loud!i laughed even harder about your cat's hairy dandruffy ass! All my best and Happy Thanksgiving!
Richard Guerry Pirtle
Hummingbird Favorite