The Quest For The Golden Hummingbird

One fine spring day three years ago, JC and I were sitting on his deck sipping a glass of wine when we heard the familiar humming vibration of a Hummingbird. We looked up and saw an amazingly beautiful, golden bronze hummer hovering in front of a red plastic tip on an aluminum ladder leaning against the wall.

“Wow!” I said, “Did you see that?”

“That was incredible! I'm going to grab my camera.”

JC refilled one of his Hummingbird feeders with fresh sugar water and hung it from the corner of the awning near the ladder. Then he brought out his Canon SLR digital camera and got it ready, pre-focused on the feeder. Naturally the little guy was a no-show for the rest of the afternoon.

The next day I brought my little Fuji camera along and JC had his Canon mounted on a tripod so he could get a steady shot. We were deep into a discussion about who knows what, when the golden hummer darted in for a quick sip of sugar water. By the time we fumbled around to our cameras he was gone. From then on it became a game of when we had our cameras ready he wouldn't show up. If we left the cameras inside he would take his time and tease us by posing on the lip of the feeder. Once when JC went inside for something the little guy flew over the table and hovered there over JC's camera. JC even purchased a remote shutter release so all he would have to do to take a picture was move his finger. By the end of summer I had one fuzzy picture that almost showed his colors in the sunlight and JC had a decent one taken on a cloudy day, but neither showed what he really looked like.

Although a lot of Hummingbirds came to the feeders, and some even got their pictures taken, we didn't see the Golden bird for several years and we assumed that he was one of a kind and long gone.

Yesterday, almost exactly three years later, while we were enjoying a rare sunny day on the deck, the Golden Hummingbird, or probably one of his progeny, returned in all his glory. We are getting the cameras ready.

Let the games begin!

Pacific Lamprey

One warm fall day at Blackberry Campground, Carol and I were wading in the Alsea River, trying to catch Crawdads. We were splashing and laughing, flailing about with a big Salmon net which had too large a mesh to really catch anything smaller than a fairly big fish.

We were in waist deep, crystal clear water and we could see schools of small fish and the bright red Crawdads darting ahead of us as we tried to keep our feet under us in the swift current.

Suddenly Carol yelled “What's that?” as a long black, snake like thing swam into view. She made a stab with the net and somehow captured it, but when she raised the net it wriggled free.

“It looks like an eel,” I said, let's see if we can net it again!” It out maneuvered us, swimming between our legs and avoiding the net no matter how hard we tried.

“I don't see it any more,” I said, shading my eyes to stop the reflection.

“There it is,” Carol yelled, “right beside your leg!”

I felt a strange tingling on my right leg and suddenly I realized that the eel had fastened itself on to me.

“SHIT!” I yelled, “IT'S ON MY LEG!”

I began thrashing, splashing, and trying with some success, to run on water. The next thing I knew I had scrambled up the steep rocky bank and was standing there shaking, looking down at Carol who was having a great time laughing at me. The eel had come loose somewhere in the commotion and was probably wondering what kind of strange fish it had tried to latch on to.

Later, after my heart rate had dropped considerably, and Carol quit chuckling, I showed her the circular ring with two fang marks the eel had left during it's brief encounter on my leg. It still gives me the willies!

I love my Kindle

On my birthday last November, JC surprised me with a brand new Kindle.

I've always loved to read, but in the short time since then, I've read 52 full length books, probably more than I had read in the previous three or four years combined.

The Kindle is truly a magical device, I was going to call it a toy, but it's much more than that. It easily downloads books in just a few minutes from the Amazon website on 3G, it has a built in browser so you can access web sites, it archives the books you've read in Amazon's “cloud” so you can download them and re-read them if you want. It has speakers and a headphone jack so you can play music while you read or listen to audio books.

Amazon offers hundreds of free books with a new list of selections every day. I have over 80 unread novels stored on my little, skinny Kindle, and it still weighs the same and doesn't take up any more shelf space than it did the day I unwrapped it.

It's a godsend on these rainy, wintery days to be able to curl up on my recliner with a couple of dogs for warmth, a glass of wine nearby, and read, read, read.

%#** Dishwasher

Yesterday when I walked up to JC's house I expected to find him sitting in front of his space heater with his coat on and a blanket over his legs again. He's been fighting a kidney infection for several days and has been feeling really crappy.

When I knocked on the back door I heard JC yell, “I'm in the kitchen!” I was surprised to see him up and cussing; yanking and pulling on the dishwasher trying to get it out from under the kitchen counter.

“The damned dishwasher died!” he said, giving it another mighty yank for good measure. “It won't come out and I can't figure out what's holding the bastard in.”

I hung my coat over a chair and laid down on the floor to look underneath. “The linoleum is curled up in front of the legs!” I told him. “Maybe that's what's holding it.” JC found a utility knife and I cut some of the curled up flooring out of the way. We both lifted, yanked, pulled and cussed but it still wouldn't come out. “Let''s take a break,” JC panted, “the sun's still shining out on the deck, let's go out, relax a bit, and think about this.”

He poured a glass of wine for me and a glass of water for himself, (He's not supposed to drink while he's on his latest prescription.) “There's definitely something holding that sucker in there,” I said, pointing out the obvious, “maybe we need to drain the water out to make it a little lighter!”

“I already dipped all of the water I could get out of it,” JC said.

After our pulse rates dropped down to almost normal we tried again, using a crowbar to pry the front end up. No matter how hard we pried, pulled and cussed, the rotten piece of crap (JC's description) refused to come out any more than about a third of the way.

Finally, after yet another rest stop, JC shined his headlamp down the gap on left side and said,”It looks like there's a piece of wood jammed in under the bottom!” Sure enough, all it took was a little tweak in the right place with the crowbar, one more mighty yank, and it popped right out. A six inch piece of wood, probably used to level the dishwasher, was the culprit. We both breathed a sigh of relief.

It turned out that we had declared success a bit too soon though, because while we were wrestling the damn thing onto a cart to roll it outside, the drain hose fell down and was running water onto the floor. We were too busy to notice because when we found out that it wouldn't fit through the kitchen door, we had to back track and hump it out the back door onto the deck. The son of a bitch must have had five gallons of water stored somewhere in it's innards and it all drained out on the floor.

JC mopped and cussed until he got it cleaned up. We both were pooped, mostly from cussing the friggin thing.

Silent Night

In the early hours when the dogs and I arise, we try our level best to quietly go about our morning routine. Carol sleeps several hours later than we do and she doesn't appreciate loud noises interrupting her favorite time to snooze.
Unfortunately, every little thing seems to make a lot of racket when the house is still and quiet. When I try to gently set the coffee pot on the kitchen counter it somehow makes a loud clunk. The drawer that holds the measuring cups squalls like a banshee when I open it. When I open the back door to go outside with the dogs, the wind catches the storm door, pulls it out of my hand and slams it. In the meantime the dogs have found something that requires some serious barking, so I do my best to quiet them down and get them back inside.
After giving them a bacon treat for being so good, and after stepping on one of their squeaky toys that squeals like a pig, I start making a fire in the fireplace. I quietly unlock the front door and go out to the carport for some firewood and some kindling. Coming back in with my arms full, a piece of Alder slips and falls to the tiled entry floor. I can always tell a good, dry piece of firewood by the crisp, hollow banging noise it makes when it echoes in our entry. Cussing, I lean over to pick it up and a piece of Douglas Fir falls beside it. (It also sounds dry and ready to burn.)
I have a system for building a foolproof fire in our fireplace insert which requires two side logs, a back log, and some kindling on top of an empty Franzia wine box. All that's left is to crumple up a couple of sheets of newspaper to stuff underneath and to light it.
For some reason crumpling newspaper in the daytime hardly makes any noise, but early in the morning when I'm trying to be stealthy and quiet, it sounds like someone pouring a large bag of marbles into the kitchen sink.
After the fire is going and the coffee has perked, I go in the den, turn on the computer and click on the dial up modem icon. A blast of whistles, beeps, honks and whines come out of the surround sound speakers, but by the time I get the volume turned down the horrendous noise is over and the computer is connected to the Internet. While I'm reading email and surfing my favorite web sites, things quiet down and even the dogs go back to sleep.
When my coffee cup runs dry I leave the den to get a refill and check the fire. It needs another log so I open the cast iron door and toss a hunk of Fir on top of the coals, but before I can close it, the fire alarm goes off and the dogs start barking uncontrollably. (I'd forgotten to open the damper before opening the door.)

Oh! Hi Honey! Are you up already?

Dream

Yesterday I walked up to JC's house to watch the Sunday afternoon football games.

As I got comfortable on the couch and took a sip of wine, JC said: “I've got to tell you about the dream I had last night. I don't know what it means, but it sure was weird! I was right in the middle of disarming a nuclear weapon, there was security all around the area, and all of a sudden you came strolling up and casually asked, 'You wanna go see a movie?'”

At least I didn't sneak up behind him and pop a paper bag like the guy in the picture.

Night Visitor

When Squeak, our Papillon and little troublemaker, was a puppy, I let her sleep on top of my bed. In the winter months the unheated back bedroom gets pretty chilly, so she soon learned how to squirm under the covers, between the flannel sheets and snuggle up against my back.
Then when summer arrived and the house warmed up at night, she began sleeping in the living room with Taz, her Lhasa Apso-Pomeranian cohort, or on top of Carol's bed. She usually would join Taz when he comes in to wake me up at four o'clock every morning. It looked like she was finally growing up.
Now that cold nights have returned and Carol has put the flannel sheets back on , around midnight Squeak comes in and jumps up on the bed. I reach out to pet her and pat a spot where she obediently curls up and lies down, but when I wake up again she's under the covers, sometimes with her head on the pillow right beside me.
I've been accused of spoiling our dogs and I guess that's true, but somehow I just haven't had the heart to deny them their comfort...Until this morning, when a tickling on my head made me look in my bedroom mirror. There in the reflection of my thinning hair was a big, fat flea scrambling for cover. He was having a hard time finding a place to hide, and I caught him between my thumb and forefinger as he raced around. I squashed as hard as I could for a good half a minute but when I opened my fingers to hopefully see his smashed carcass, he made a mighty leap and disappeared down into the carpet.
Tonight my bedroom is off limits to all puppy dogs.
And I mean it.
I'm serious, now.

The Bad and the Good

Lately it's been hard to find anything lighthearted to write about, with Brad in the hospital for almost three weeks and Don in and out of the emergency room for similar stomach problems.

On the bright side JC seems to be feeling surprisingly well, and we have David coming home from Afghanistan in time for the holidays. If all goes as planned he should be back in the states sometime next month for debriefing and then home for a well deserved vacation with his wife and son.

Bucket List Road Trip

The "3,000 Mile, Bucket List Road trip" has been added to, and moved to a website:
http://bobert54.webs.com/

Little Things

Yesterday as Carol and I were walking into Walmart, I noticed that she had a couple of clothing tags sticking up at the back of her neck. I said,” Hold it a minute Hon,” and proceeded to try and tuck them in. “Darn it,” she said, “ I can never see if those things are sticking out or not!”

A woman walking by, leaned toward us and said, “The secret is having someone who loves you enough to do it for you!” I never got a good look at her, but I was struck by what she said. I seem to remember an old 1950's song with the line, “Little things mean a lot!”

They do!