Friday, June 7, 2013

Bye Bye Birdy

As you know, we had a robin's nest right outside our front door last month. It was exciting to get to watch this whole little experience unfold everyday, from the eggs being laid to them flying away. I kind of felt like they were my next door neighbors, The Robins. And they were pretty good neighbors at that. Not too noisy, kept to themselves. Just what everyone wants.

On the morning of May 16th, I noticed the parents were not on the nest and two of the baby birds were sitting on the edge of the nest. I thought "Oh, today is the day!" and just like that, one of them took off and flew away into the trees on the side of our yard. It was really amazing to see it happen.

I ran to get my camera so I could try to capture the next one before he flew away. I came back, got the next two shots, then left him alone so he could do his thing.

"Quit staring at me."

"I'll go when I'm good and ready weirdo."

Only he didn't. He sat on the edge of that nest for hours and by hours I mean like 5 straight hours. Every now and then I'd go check on him to see if he'd left, but he was still sitting there like he had no clue what do.

"Leave me alone creeper."

I tried giving him a pep talk. I told him I knew it was scary and it was hard, but he had to go out into the big wide world and make his own way, discover who he was and maybe have a family of his own.

And then I got sad from my pep talk and had to go lay down for a bit.

The entire time he was sitting there, I could hear his parents calling to him. That's when I saw them in the trees on the side of the yard where the first baby bird flew away to. They were trying to get him to come to them and he just wasn't having anything to do with it.

"Would you hurry up! Dinner is getting cold! Freaking kids."

But finally he took the leap and flew away to his mommy and daddy. That's when we noticed a third baby bird in the next who we thought at first was dead (it was just laying at the bottom of the nest not moving) but as it turns out was just taking a rest before he too flew away.

The nest is still in our rhododendron, just sitting there empty. I read online that some times robins will move into an empty nest and lay eggs. So far that hasn't happened and I doubt it really will, but I can hope that it does.





Thursday, June 6, 2013

My Life, In A Nutshell

I woke up this morning to find a note on my Facebook wall from an old friend saying "Just checked your blog...". My response? "Did you see a tumbleweed blow through?" because really, it wouldn't surprise me in the least.

My life, as of late, has been a tad chaotic. And by chaotic I mean bat poop crazy. This coming weekend is the first one in at least a month where we have no plans at all. None. Like I have two days wide open  with nothing going on and I don't know how to handle it.

"So what's been keeping you so busy Jen?" Here's a run down for you...


  • The birds that I wrote about in earlier posts flew away. I was lucky enough to see it happen and it made me so sad I had to lay down for a while.
  • I turned fourty...something. Meh.
  • Mother's Day was the weekend after my birthday and I spent it at home watching Doctor Who and drinking Prosecco (greatest Mother's Day ever).
  • My daughter went to the prom. All the work I put into getting her ready for it, I felt like I was the one going (side note: she had a great time and looked beautiful. All the work was totally worth it).
  • I tripped over the hem of a maxi dress while out on a romantic date night with my husband and went down like a ton of bricks. I hit my left knee, right hand and chin on the curb. I skinned my knee and hand and got a lump on my chin that made me look like Jay Leno. Lesson I took away? Hobbits shouldn't wear maxi dresses.
  • My husband turned and even older than me forty-something.
  • We took our daughter and a friend to Boston Calling over Memorial Day weekend. This was a big, outdoor music festival in Government Center in Boston. It would have been great had the first day not been rainy and cold. Only in Boston can Memorial Day weekend be lousy and awful. But I had a cute rain coat and kept my social anxiety levels in check despite being in the middle of a crowd of 20,000 college kids all smoking pot.
  • My daughter, who will be ending her junior year of high school in just a couple of weeks, has been occupied by all these wonderful tests like an AP Language, the SATs as well as these gems called Subject Tests that I've never heard of in my life but are the biggest pain in the butt. She took the Subject Tests this past weekend. I thought "Yay, we're done!" but apparently not. She plans on taking the SAT again in the fall in the hopes of improving her test scores (yes, she is an overachiever).
All this plus loads of laundry, sinks full of dishes and all the other daily nuisances of life have prevented me from keeping up on my blog duties. I really should do a post on all these separate things because I got some great pictures of each event (except the tripping and injuring myself. If I got that on film I'd cry for the rest of my life). Perhaps I'll be able to do that, what with the entire weekend open before me...

And since I hate a blog post without pictures, I'll leave you with this shot I got of my cat Cali recently...


In my next life, I want to come back as a cat so I can lay around in the sun and sleep all day.