Three reminders

Life has gone by fast lately. It seems the last four or five years have been nothing but a blur. There have been good times, that's for sure, but they seem to get lost in the whirl of day to day living.

But, in the last few weeks, I have found some remembrances of an earlier life. The kids were very young, I was probably in a state of perpetual confusion, but each one of them gave me their own views on life, words that kept me going even when I thought i did not even know myself.

Vinny- When he was in his twos and we had recently moved to Missouri for a job The Hermit took, I found myself floundering in depression, from living far away from family, from moving away from the life we'd built early in our marriage, and maybe some postpartum depression after giving birth to Nina. She was, by the way, a very challenging infant. Which will probably explain the quote from her.

in the midst of all this, I had an extremely intelligent and perceptive two year old son, who took it all in stride. One night when I was not at my best, he took one of those drawing tablets they have, the plastic ones where you draw things with a stylus and it can be erased wi a swipe. He drew a spider. An oval, eight legs radiating from it like sunbeams, and a smile on its face.

"I drew you a 'pider, Mom. I hope it makes you happy."

Oh Vinny, if you only knew. That spider probably saved me.

Now on to Nina, or as she was known in her infant years, Nina Sirena. She could grab your attention and drive babysitters to insanity. She was an independent gal from the start. When she was about the same age as Vinny was when he drew the sweet spider, I was trying to tell her to do something one day. I don't remember what it was. Anyway, she looked at me thoughtfully and said, "It's not MINE purpose. It's YOURS purpose!"

wow.

I did not expect that to kick in until the teenage years. And now that she is a teenager, well almost, it is kind of a relief that she got that out of her system early. We are pretty good at talking things out and negotiating.

And as for Joe, well, I have a photo of him, an analog, physical copy that I need to scan one of these days. In it, he is about two years old (why are all these stories seeming to converge on the Terrible Twos?), and he has a very thoughtful look on his face. His finger is crooked at the corner of his mouth, adding to the drama. "What shall I do next?" I wish I had it scanned now, so you could see the mischief on his face. It was about this same time in his life that he left a DeWalt lamp on the bed, face down turned on, and nearly burned the cabin down. The wool blanket saved us.

Three reminders, that, while I was going through times in my life that I thought were pretty tough, three reminders of what I was living for, and what kept me going.

I'm still here...

Yes, I am still here in the blogging world, still trying to figure out the intricacies of blogging photos on the iPad. I've been meaning to post more often, tell about my birding trip to Sax Zim Bog with Lynne, my reunion with high school friends I hadn't seen in years. Et cetera. But what matters most to me, this morning, is that I am alive and well. And I am reminded that I am not invincible. Last night, when I was driving to the activity bus stop a mile and a half from home to pick up Nina and her friend, I skidded straight through a "T" intersection and ended up well beyond the ditch. I'm fine, the car took some serious hits from tree stumps and saplings and is not drivable. It all happened so fast, I am at a loss to explain what went wrong, why such an ordinary drive I make all the time ended up that way. I was a half mile away from home, approaching the intersection which is the north end of my road. I stepped on the brakes as usual, and...nothing happened. I kept going. There was fresh snow on the road, but nothing I'm not used to. I think my brakes failed. The whole thing was kind of a blur, but I don't remember hearing the anti lock brakes grind, I don't remember feeling any slowing down when I stepped on the brakes. I know I didn't accidentally hit the accelerator because I was pressing down hard and the engine didn't rev. Whatever it was, and I'm willing to admit I probably was not concentrating as much as I should have, but STILL...anyway, I'm pretty lucky to be alive and unhurt, except maybe for my ego. I am humbled and reminded that anything can happen, anytime, and life can change in an instant. I'm still here, and I am grateful.

Testing BlogPress

I got a nifty Apple wireless keyboard for my iPad yesterday. It is so small it could fit into a backpack, and the keys have just the right amount of action so it feels good typing. The iPad screen is okay for typing for a short time, but I want to be able to use the iPad for writing longer things. Like blog posts.

The problem with that is, apparently Blogger, WordPress, and other platforms have not kept up with the rapidly evolving world of apps. I can do limited writing and editing on the standard Web interface on Safari, but it does not want to add photos or hyperlinks. Blogger has an app for iPad, but again the functionality is very limited. So this morning I spent the $2.99 and downloaded BlogPress (thank goodness apps are cheap). It has tools to insert HTML so you don't have to write your own, and there is a tool to upload photos that are stored on the iPad. Apparently if I want to add a photo from Picasa I have to copy the location and insert the proper HTML. The downside is, there is no WYSIWYG interface, no previews. And when I went back and tried to complete a draft of a post I am working on, for some reason I could not start typing.

My prediction is that by the end of 2012 someone will have come up with an app that solves these issues. After all, if we can put a man on the moon...

Now for a test photo:





- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

A Monday holiday

I am sitting here in my rocking chair by the wood stove with a cat in my lap, another one on my shoulders. The third cat tried to get on my lap, but since Frisky takes up most of my lap space that was not possible.

I like it when holidays fall on Sundays, because that means I get the following Monday off work. Whatever observance of the holiday is behind me, and I get a "bonus" day to relax and regroup before getting back into the normal routine.

A week ago I spent my Monday holiday doing what has become a tradition for me: the Pine County Christmas Bird Count. It was the warmest count day ever, with temperatures in the 40's, and with the lack of snow it felt more like late October than the day after Christmas. There were also strong winds, which made birding more challenging. Nonetheless, my group came up with 24 species, including a rare treat for this area: a golden eagle! Bald eagles are fairly common around here, even throughout the winter now, but I had never positively identified a golden eagle in this area. Even the expert birders I was with had to consult their field guides, and they ended up having a lengthy discussion about what features distinguished it from a dark morph rough legged hawk. In the end the wind helped them make the distinction. Since a golden eagle is considerably heavier than a rough legged hawk, its flight is less buoyant. A rough legged hawk would have hovered more and soared more lightly in the wind. It was a good learning experience for me: good birders never assume anything and consider all the details.

This Monday holiday will be a bit more home-based. I will finish cutting up the turkey we had last night, maybe making a soup from the leftovers. Maybe I will finally make the time to play music, like I keep telling myself I will. At least I've already blogged, which is more than I can say for most days last year!

Goin' wireless!

Testing 123... At long last, I have a pretty good WiFi signal in the house and I'm using the Blogger for iPad app. Oh yeah, THAT was my big Christmas present! So what better subject for a test photo than Frisky.

dreaming of a brown Christmas

Has it been over a month already since I've posted? 2011 will certainly not go down as a big blogging year for me. Yes, I'm still thinking of ideas for blog posts all the time, and there is always something interesting going on here to write about. But then there's this big disconnect between experiencing something, forming the words to describe it, getting to a medium where I can jot those words down for later use, and actually sitting down at the computer and connecting with Blogger. I've been going through my archives, and from what I see there it didn't used to be this difficult. Of course back then I didn't have teenage kids monopolizing the computer, and I didn't have Facebook for those moments I would have jotted down a quick blog post just to let the world know something.

This morning I have the computer to myself, finally. I stayed home from work with a bit of a sore throat and cold, just enough that work would have been somewhat miserable. I'm kind of glad to have a "me" day. The Hermit was out of town all last week, and between tending the wood stove and driving to various kids' activities, I didn't have much spare time. Fortunately the weather was very mild for December, even though some of the days were dark and gray, so heating was not a major issue. This has been one of the mildest Decembers I can remember, and what little snow we have has come an inch or so at a time. That means occasionally conditions on the pond have been perfect for ice skating, something I did not get to enjoy last year.

Christmas spirit is running at perhaps an all time high this year. Vinny found a very nice balsam fir on our property, and took it upon himself to cut it, bring it inside, and set it up by himself. Nina and Joe joined in for the decorating. I decided to make up for all the years I thought about making Christmas cookies but didn't get any further than that. Three batches done so far, about eight to go.

Brewing is also being done at the rate of about one five gallon batch a week. You'd think I'd have a lot of beer sitting around ready for consumption at that rate, but oddly enough it seems to disappear as soon as it has sat in bottles long enough to build carbonation.

Here's Frisky, official mascot of "Sixteen Pound Siamese Brewery", overseeing the transfer of a wheat beer from fermenter to carboy.

That's the news from Sand Creek for now. Come to think of it, it feels pretty good to be blogging again. I'll be back soon.

birding skills

It's been a long time since I've done a birding-oriented blog post. It's not that I have not seen birds, but being the opportunistic birder that I am, as well as the lazy blogger, I haven't taken many bird photos this year, or taken the time to report my findings. Today, however, I had a birding moment that not only resulted in a new Year Bird, it also gave me reason to reflect on what makes a good birder and how every experience is a teacher.

In a work-related errand, I went to a small dirt road that had been built over a bog many years ago. This road had been flooded over and washed out many times in recent years. Well duh, you build a road on a wetland, what do you expect? But nevertheless, the township wants to clean out an old ditch to see if it will alleviate the flooding. Truthfully, I'm not the right person to make that determination. I'm not a hydrologist. But even without those credentials, I can tell you I really don't think clearing a little brush and silt out of a ditch will make much of a difference in the drainage of a hundred or more acre bog, especially when the land (bog) is flat and the next stop is a 35 foot deep bog lake. But whatever.

This is the road. The water level is about a foot below the road bed. Something tells me that this road should never have been built here. But again, that's not mine to judge. I liked how it looked though; with all the tamaracks and spruces, and the understory of unique bog plants, this looked like great bird habitat.

As I paused to look at the side of the road in search of a culvert, I heard the sound of little bits of something dropping from a nearby tamarack. Birding skill #1: Use your ears. I immediately scanned the tree branches for the source, likely a bird or red squirrel feeding on tamarack cones.It took a while, but I finally picked out a flock of about six smallish birds, occasionally flitting from branch to branch as they fed on buds or cones. Birding skill #2: Think habitat. What kind of bird would be using tamarack as a food source? Something told me these weren't chickadees, or goldfinches; they just weren't acting that way. Birding skill #3: Watch for behavioral cues.

I was regretting not having a pair of binoculars with me. Birding skill #4: Always carry your binoculars! The birds were just dark silhouettes against the midday sky. But I had the work camera with me, with its limited zoom, so I thought maybe I could take a few photos and examine them in greater detail later. Birding skill #5: Always carry your camera! I was also thinking for some reason that my iPhone, which has the cool Sibley bird app, was still in the car. Birding skill #6: Carry a field guide! So I decided to head back to the car and get my phone. But before I did that, I decided to try "pishing" to see if that would bring any of the birds closer. Birding skill #7: "Pishing" comes in handy. In no time the entire flock took notice and flew across the road. I, of course, saw little dark flying silhouettes. But I did hear some vocalizations, and that was enough to rule out a few common species. Birding skill #8: See #1. I got back to the car only to realize my iPhone had been in my pocket the entire time. I opened up Sibley's and scrolled to what was becoming a likely suspect.

Recognize these silhouettes yet? The audio calls in the app matched up with what I had heard. And when I zoomed in on this photo, I was able to see some distinctive white wing patches.

White winged crossbills! My first in a long time. But along with the satisfaction of seeing a species that is only seen irregularly, I noticed that my birding skills were becoming more sharp. Perhaps the best way to develop identification skills is not by being told what species is in front of you and then watching it, but by being presented with an unfamiliar species and figuring out what cues might distinguish it from other species.

And, the Sibley iPhone app comes in very handy. :)