Where's your tuffet?

Little Miss Muffet

Sat on a tuffet,

Eating her curds and whey;

Along came a spider,

Who sat down besides her

And frightened Miss Muffet away.

You've heard the nursery rhyme before -- probably hundreds of times. I know I have. This morning I was sitting in my big, brown, comfy chair drinking my breakfast. Every morning I make a Pure Protein whey shake with a small banana blended with ice. Great breakfast. So anyway, there I am looking at my drink, thinking about whey when Little Miss Muffet came to mind.

When I was little, I thought tuffet was another word for behind. You know, like a person's behind, or their rear, rump, butt, whatever you want to call it. I had no idea that a tuffet meant a stool. When you look it up, the definition is: a tuft or clump of something, or a footstool or low seat. I'm not sure when I learned it was something she sat on and not her rear-end, but that's what I thought the word meant when I was little. So anyway, I remember giggling to myself whenever I heard this rhyme because I thought it was silly it was mentioned that she sat on her tuffet. I mean, what else would she sit on?

Kids say funny things and often they don't realize the meaning of what they say. I did that with a few things when I was little. We used to have a department store called The Broadway. I used to call it The Broad's Way. My mom would give me a stern look, which told me that wasn't a good thing to say. Another was when we bought our house in Ojai. My mom went to the road to pull up the "For Sale" sign. As she walked back through the yard, I chanted, "Mom's for sale! Mom's for sale!" I got another stern look. Obviously, my joke wasn't funny. I also have this funny little birthmark on my right, big toe. It's shaped like a little bush. Again, my mom didn't think it was funny when I used to say, "That's my little bush!" D'oh! But hey, I was five, so I didn't know I was being inappropriate or saying something bad.

Did you ever say something inappropriate although undeliberate?

Goodbye, Frankie.

 

I am deeply saddened to hear of the loss of Barbara Techel's beloved dog, Frankie. It's not often I shed tears for other people's pets, especially people that I've never even met in person before. I did for Barbara and Frankie. This little dachshund has touched so many lives in her short lifetime. My heart aches for Barbara and her husband, John. I know how painful losing a pet is. It's even more difficult when you've experienced an illness or injury, and have helped a pet to regain a normal life. It's not an easy thing to do.

Obviously, I can't tell Frankie's story as well as Barbara, so I urge you to check out her website to learn more about this wonderful, little dog and all of the lives she's touched. I bought Barbara's picture book, Frankie The Walk 'n Roll Dog for Neil's birthday a few years back. He loved it, as did I. Please check out Barbara's website to see how you can help other dogs like Frankie.

To Barbara and John -- You're in my thoughts and prayers. God bless.

Barbara's website -- Joyful Paws

PEANUTS?

I saw this cartoon online today and I laughed -- and then I laughed and laughed and laughed some more. If you've followed any of my squirrel stories, you'll understand why I find it so funny. My squirrels are so spoiled. If I don't get the seeds out early enough, they start body slamming the French doors in the bedroom. They only eat sunflowers seeds. And they can't just be regular sunflower seeds. They have to be the black-oil sunflower seeds. I understand that with the tiny birds because those are easier to open, but I don't get why the squirrels have to have them as well. I've tried regular sunflower seeds and they wouldn't touch them.

This cartoon struck me so funny because about a week ago Rick bought a big bag of unsalted peanuts. He usually rags on me about feeding all the wildlife, so I was surprised he wanted to get these for the squirrels. I told him I didn't think they'd eat them. Sure as hell -- wouldn't touch the things. I even broke a couple open for them so the nuts were exposed. Nope -- not even a nibble. Crazy little boogers. That's why this cartoon made me laugh so hard this morning. That's how I'm going to look in a few more years and I'm sure the squirrels are going to get meaner and more demanding. God help us all.

Happy Father's Day!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Father's Day. I was looking on my computer for pictures of Rick with the kids. Geez, it's been a long time since I got one with just him and all four kids. That's harder to do these days with the girls working or away in school or someplace. I did find this one.

It was taken in Joshua Tree National Park, probably sometime around 2002. That was a fun camping trip. Nathan was really into the Land Before Time movies back then. There was one where the dinosaurs were searching for the Great Valley. We went on the Hidden Valley Nature Walk in the park and every time we passed someone Nathan would say, "We're going to the Great Valley!" It was pretty cute. He probably expected to see dinosaurs.

I hope you all have a great Father's Day and are enjoying your weekend.

Two fun finds ...

As usual, yesterday Neil and I did our usual stomp through the local Salvation Army. I didn't find a whole lot I couldn't live without. Neil found a grand piano and tried to convince me he needed it to work on music for his movies. He's so funny. It actually wasn't all that expensive -- about $80.

Piano aside, we did find a couple of books. One is this Graphic Organizers and Activities for Differentiated Instruction in Reading. I liked that it was for grades 4-8, so this will be something I can do with both boys at the same time, and just work at their own levels. It has a $14.99 price tag sticker on the back, but I got it for a quarter. That worked for me.

I also got the book below called How To Draw 101 Animals. It's cool and has all sorts of great animals in it, even lemurs and bison. Again, it cost me a quarter. One nice thing about finding these older books at a thrift store is that it usually leads me to the author's website. The animals book was done by Dan Green and he has a lot of other books I might be interested in using for school. I never know what I'm going to find -- or who I might discover.

Wild Thing

I'm going through some old photographs today. I came across a bunch from past trips to Yellowstone. If anything, all they're doing is making me wish I were there. I came across this picture above and it always makes me laugh. I have no idea who that man is, but his hat says Ennis, Montana. Figures. It just goes to show you how close people get and don't give wildlife the space they need and deserve. He's lucky he didn't get gored. Those antlers might be covered with fuzzy velvet, but they can still cause injury.

I also came across the following pictures of a time we watched a grizzly sow take down an elk with her two cubs. We were really far away and didn't own the good zoom lens that we have now, so these pictures are cropped pretty hard. They'll give you a little idea of what we saw. The bears chased them back and forth. They were on a little inlet of land between Yellowstone Lake and an overflow area of water. They literally had no where to go.

In the picture above you can see them perk up and start looking around. In the picture below, they realize it's a grizzly and take off running. If you've ever heard an elk scream, you know how eerie that sounds. Now just imagine a whole herd of them screaming. Freaky.

Here comes the mom in the picture below. She doesn't look all that big here, but remember we were really far away and the picture is cropped.

In the photograph below you can see the sow on the right and then one of the cubs coming up along the left. There were two cubs with her, but they were spread out and I didn't get all three in the same picture. And once they started running after the elk, they were just everywhere.

The picture below is when they were running. The elk ran all over the place, including in the water. I honestly can't tell if this is the mother and a cub, or if it's both cubs. It happened pretty fast.

This last picture is where the sow took down one of the elk. It happened just over the bank, so we couldn't actually see the elk, but we saw it go down. Every now and then one of the three bears would pop its head up to look around while they were eating. Nom, nom, nom ...

Not to be morbid, but it was fascinating to watch. Typically, bears go after elk that are young, sick, or elderly. If you think about that, it is kind of sad. But then you just have to realize how many elk there are in relation to how many grizzlies there are. It's a wild thing to witness, and it's definitely not something you see every time you go to the park.

Feeling Antsy ...

I suppose you could say I have those dreaded after-vacation-blues. I can pretty much say I haven't done anything since getting home from Walt Disney World. Well, just about anything -- of course, I have managed to eat, sleep, bathe, and waste an incredible amount of time online. Ten days in the parks might not sound like a lot, but it's exhausting. Since we were done with school, I knew I'd take that first week easy to relax and recover from our trip. I figured a week would do it, and then I'd work myself into some sort of routine for the summer. Yeahrightsure. It's been just about three weeks now.

Seriously? What the heck? I wish I could say why I'm in such a rut, but I can't. It's not like I don't have stuff to do. I have a ton of things to do for school, like portfolios and yearbooks, not to mention prepare for the upcoming school year. I have a huge pile of books next to my bed that I've been wanting to read. I have two new picture book ideas. I have another idea for a photograph picture book. Then there is cleaning the house, which I'm seriously beginning to think I've forgotten how to do. What is the deal?

What I really want to do is get out of the house. I've been getting antsy about going camping, especially to Glacier National Park or maybe even further south to Yellowstone or Grand Teton. That's what I want to do -- not all this other tedious stuff that I should be doing. The weather hasn't helped much either, since it's been raining a lot. We've had a couple of nice days, but those always seem to land mid-week when Rick is at work. The main road that goes through Glacier, the Going-To-The-Sun Road, is hopefully going to open sometime next week. They were shooting for this weekend, which would have been awesome with it being Father's Day and all, but a recent snowstorm dumped ten more inches of snow and has prolonged the opening. Last year the road didn't open until mid-July, the latest in its history. Check out the link above for more information. It's an absolutely wild road. I have a serious love/hate relationship with it.

In case you were wondering what the above picture is -- ANTS! I took that at a campground in Utah called Cherry Hill. It's a combo RV/waterpark and we used to stop there every year when we made our trip up to Yellowstone. To give you a better view, here's another shot of them a little further away ...