AmyKossBlogThang: Why I Hate %!@%&! Nature

AmyKossBlogThang: Why I Hate %!@%&! Nature: Dears, Remember my last post about a bird nest in my yard? To recap: The parents built their wacky hanging nest, and they came and wen...

AmyKossBlogThang: Why I Hate %!@%&! Nature

AmyKossBlogThang: Why I Hate %!@%&! Nature: Dears, Remember my last post about a bird nest in my yard? Well I bet you can guess the rest of the story... right? And the reason you can ...

Why I Hate %!@%&! Nature

Dears,
Remember my last post about a bird nest in my yard?

To recap:
The parents built their wacky hanging nest. Then they came and went and came and went, like birds do.

I put up my emotional dukes, like I do, addressing myself in a stern voice: This nest, including its builders and inhabitants, is none of your business, Amy. In fact it's SO not your business that it is practically criminal voyeurism to pay any attention at all.  

"Ha!" Nature says, "HA! HA! HA!"

The eggs hatched.
Other people heard them but I couldn't until day four or five when the babies were big and strong enough to make a sound even my waxy old ears could detect. It was a creaky peep like tiny rusted hinges. 

Today one of the babies fell or jumped out of the nest.

OF COURSE IT DID! 
Nature pulls that shit all the damn time! What the hell is it with nature that babies have to fall out of nests?

"Oopsie!" Nature simpers. "Tra-la-la."

The baby is unbearably cute and round and weighs no more than a leaf. It is trusting and defenseless and in no way prepared for this world of hawks and coyotes and kitties and my own evil roommate hounds, or wind or cold or night. 

But Nature shrugs one shoulder and looks away with a yawn, leaving the frantic parents, and the baby and me to figure it out -- or not. 

This is the real nest -- Way, way high in the tree

This is the basket we hung as high as we could reach in his tree to imitate his nest.  So far, the parents are feeding him there, but what happens tonight when it gets cold????

 
xo Amy
P.S. Thanks to Em & Juan for their profound basket hanging skills. 

AmyKossBlogThang: Birdbrains!

AmyKossBlogThang: Birdbrains!: O f all the trees in town, what compelled this bird to hang her nest from this flimsy palm frond where the least breeze could dump her...

Birdbrains!

What compelled this chick to hang her nest from a flimsy palm frond where the least breeze could dump her babies SPLAT! on the hard packed dirt of my yard? 

A yard, I might add, with two resident dogs and two daily visitor dogs, all relentlessly in search of the kind of amusement that helpless baby birds could provide.

It's not that the mom was lazy, she worked her tiny feathered ass off building this nest. So now it dangles its precious cargo in my face, as a reminder of the precariousness of life.

Sigh.

This is probably how my parents felt when I moved to California and started my life on a fault-line. Or how they felt when I smoked cigarettes, or decided to go into the arts.

Good luck you stupid little birdies! May the wind never blow and the rains never come until your babies have hatched and grown and flown away.

xo Amy

AmyKossBlogThang: Dead Father's Day!

AmyKossBlogThang: Dead Father's Day!: I just got an e-mail suggesting I SKYPE with my dad this Sunday for father's day. The ad c laims that skype is so easy that even the el...

Dead Father's Day!

I just got an e-mail suggesting I SKYPE with my dad this Sunday for father's day. The ad claims that skype is so easy that even the elderly can master it. Imagine the elderly learning anything!!!!

The ad did not however, mention whether it was too taxing for the deceased. 

Unlike the stereotype of Jewish men being all fumbly and inept at all things mechanical, my dad was a brilliant problem solver and fixer and figure-er-outter of how things worked. It wasn't until the very end of his life that simple tasks began to flummox him. The dishwasher, the computer... the very same ones that he'd formerly understood, began to mess with him. 

He didn't take it well. 

First he raged at the stupid TV, the stupid radio. Then when he watched the dishwasher repair guy simply hit the lock-unlock switch... my dad's anger turned inward. He was furious at himself for being "stupid."

When I suggested he treat himself as gently as he would any other old fart who was losing his marbles, he ignored me. 

I reminded him how sweet he'd been with Milt Levine after his various strokes and what not. "Remember how you drove Milt to dialysis and  played games to get him to remember words like umbrella? Can't you be as nice to yourself as you were to Milt?"

No.

So my dad probably could not have mastered SKYPE there at the end. And the whole futuristic, Jetson's-like wackiness of talking with real-time video from across the country -- might have fucked with his wavering grasp of reality. 

And once dead, I can't help thinking that it would make for less than a cozy Father's day, gathering the family 'round the ole computer to skype with my decomposing dad in his coffin setting. 

It could frighten the children. And really, what would we say?

There's no need to SKYPE with my father-in-law either because he's right here on the bookshelf in the living room, encased in a demurely quilted box that I made for him in one of my homier moments. Plus, skyping with ash and bone-fragments sounds like a sneezy allergy attack waiting to happen. IMHO. 

So, thanks, SKYPE, for the thought, but I think we'll celebrate some other way this year. Perhaps it's Dead-Dads-Get-In-Free at the multi-plex?

Better yet, how about free beer and popcorn for everyone with no father on father's day? And free cookies, and a hug.

Happy Father's Day,
Smooch 'em if you've got 'em!
xo
Amy