bluebirds, funerals and strange words

This is just a simple photo of a bluebird captured outside our kitchen window this morning. It is the first one we have seen in our yard.  If you knew how long and how hard hubby has worked trying to attract this breed of bird to our feeders you would understand why I had to post it. 

I feel as if we spend a small fortune each year on keeping the feeders full and the only birds that seem to use them regularly (excluding a pair of gorgeous cardinals) is a chattering of starlings. 

That is right I said a chattering of starlings.  Hubby just told me that my use of the word flock was incorrect. Sorry hubby but, I had to check with Google to make sure you were right before I changed it.  

Now that knowledge has changed the theme of this post.  What started as a simple piece on the problems of attracting bluebirds (like the noisy firehouse across the street and the huge squirrel nests in almost every three in the neighborhood) is being redirected to all the strange words that have crossed my path recently.  

Just yesterday when I asked a friend to look across the room at a group of ladies I was corrected and told that a group of ladies is called a bevy. She also said a group of boys is a blush.  Don't understand that one at all.  I'm sure if I told my grandson that he was part of a blush when hanging out with his friends I'd never hear the end of it. 

My mother has taken to using the word peckish when she is hungry and several times a day she lets whoever is in hearing distance know that "old age is not for sissies." 

It has been a rough week for us. As I posted a few days ago, my mother spent last Wednesday and Thursday in the hospital.  On Friday a call came from the nursing home informing my sister that her mother-in-law was failing.  She passed away on Monday at the age of eighty-five. The funeral is tomorrow. The women of my family are all working at putting together the Lazerous Dinner.  I have been asked to do desserts.  

On top of that, hubby is not feeling well.  He went out this morning to run an errand and a truck sideswiped our car destroying the front quarter panel and drove off.  No one was hurt and we have good insurance so the car will be quickly repaired but our deductible is high so that is a bummer. 

To top off our day, we were informed that the special cat food we feed our diabetic kitty has been recalled because metal chips were found in some of the cans.  So I had to return our stockpile to the store and settle for a less effective brand until a new supply is received. 

Hope your week is going better than ours.  I better get back to my baking.        

Noisy Neighbors

I suppose everyone has had to put up with a lousy neighbor at some point in their life.  I have certainly had more than my share over the years.  There has been the next door apartment leased to college kids who liked to party late into the night, and the family whose yard was an obstacle course of broken machinery and wrecked automobiles.  Then it seems every neighborhood has that one couple who had to always be spying into everyone's business with occasional calls to 911 just to make things even more contentious.   

More times than I care to count over the last fifty years of living on my own,  I've had to knock on a neighbor's door about a problem with their kids, pets, noise or some infraction of normal neighborhood behavior. 

I will admit that since hubby and I retired we have had to be more understanding of things like noises that wakes us up, only because we no longer have a set routine.  We have gravitated toward a nocturnal life and can be caught sleeping at almost any time of day or night.  So, a neighbor repairing their roof in the mid afternoon has to be overlooked. When I was a day sleeper due to work I used white sound, ear muffs, and heavy curtains to make my bedroom into night but now it seems like too much effort.

Over the last few weeks, we have had many odd things in the neighborhood rousing us from our needed rest, all of which we were helpless to change.     

These blackbirds settled into the tree behind us and decided to stay for a few days feeding on whatever it was they were finding in the field between us and the church behind us.  Their noise was remarkable.  They could be scared off but they kept coming back.  

Another day we were awakened to both the phone and cable companies doing repairs on the street by our house.  This pole is only a few feet from our kitchen window. The hard hat in the bucket just had to shoot the breeze with the guy on the ground which required him to speak loudly. The two of them had a lot to talk about.

A few days ago we went to bed during a heavy rain and woke up several hours later to what sounded like a plane load of golf balls hitting the roof.  The hail stones ranged from pea to nickel size chunks that melted rather quickly. 

I do hope the neighborhood will settle down for a while.  It is only eight weeks until school will be out and all the kiddies will be waking us with their play. I will admit hearing children having fun is not the worst thing to have to endure in our retirement.

Linking to STRAIGHT OUT OF THE CAMERA SUNDAY

Stop by and see what others have to share this week. 

 

Outside my Window

It's two thirty on a Sunday afternoon.  The thermometer on my patio fence reads eleven degrees. The yard is all white and freezing rain has been intermittent for hours.  I have been sitting at my computer since noon and regularly looking out the window beside me at the corner of our yard where two normally busy sheets meet.  I have not seen a single vehicle travel down either street during this time, so folks must be heeding the weather folk's advice to stay home.  

I just went to the kitchen for a drink and luckily my camera was on the counter.   There were three birds fighting over the suet hubby had rigged up in front of our kitchen window.  

They were so busy they failed to notice me when I started clicking away.  I have no idea what kind of birds these are but they were certainly happy to find our feeders.