Nothing Spectacular Going On Today

Just Tuesday, I guess.  Which is not a bad thing.

Since I put the hummingbird feeders up, Bill's seen the bird once and I haven't seen him at all.  Or her, he's clueless when it comes to hummingbird gender!  But since femals tend to outnumber the males, at least the ones we've usually had, it was possibly a female.

The wrens on the front porch are all gone.  We've been watching them and they have been getting bigger by the minute and they were standing up in the nest this morning.  Mama bird was in the tree beside the porch, and she was chirping her head off.  When I was getting in the car, I saw her swoop back to the nest and keep going - chirping all the while.  I was pretty sure that she was calling them out for flying lessons, and apparently she was because they are all gone this afternoon.  I'll wait awhile before I clean the nest out.  That's two families of birds on our porch this year, the first was a robin and was actually underneath the overhang on the opposite side of a pole from the nest in the planter that the wren seems to like.

In 3 weeks, we'll be on vacation!  This is the stay at home vacation that we really need.  Otter probably only has class on the Monday of the week, then the rest of the week is free time for her as well.  Other than going to the zoo, if the weather is cooperative that is, we don't have any big plans.  We are going to tackle the doll house refurbish, though.  It's been sitting on my workbench for about a year, since I haven't had any big craft projects that required the use of the workbench it hasn't been a problem.  But I'm wanting to get it done and so is Otter.  We were originally going to work on it last year when we had our summer vacation, but that is when it got so unmentionable hot and we put it off until our December vacation.  But the December vacation became a trip to TEXAS, so it didn't get done then either.  We're going to get it done, or at least as much as we can, even if we have to bring it inside the house and chase Bill & the pachinko machines out of the way!  Actually, I don't think it's going to take forever, we should be able to get it done in a week and still have time to spare.  It's not like when we (ok, Bill) built the thing!

I have a load of laundry going at the moment.  From the sounds, I'd say that somebody had a coin in their pocket and it's rattling around the dryer.  Rule is, anything not removed from pockets before I wash the clothing becomes mine - especially if it's money!  I do check the pockets, but I might have missed something this time.

Otter's very much her parents daughter, so that means that she is a crafter.  Her room is a nice size for her, but she doesn't have much in the way of storage space.  What she does have is an exploding craft/fabric/sewing/etc. stash and no place to put it.  We have plastic shelf units in the office closet, one is holding my misc. stuff as well as the overflow yarn (lot of that!) and some stuff such as our emergency supplies (necessary when you live in Tornado Alley).  Bill's shelf unit is on the opposite side of the closet and has computer stuff, his shipping supplies, junk (he has a lot of that).  There are two or three other shelf units that are in the shed, they were used in the garage and also in the old house to hold our eBay inventory.  I got to thinking about the extra shelves and the fact that Otter needs something in the way of storage.  I measured the shelf unit that's in the closet, then met her in her room and we had a brainstorm.  Upshot is, Bill's getting one of the shelf units out of the shed on Sunday if not before, and it's going into Otter's room.  It will probably block a short part of her window, but not that much.  She's probably going to have to move a couple of things around, but it should work well for her needs.  She's mostly glad she'll be able to get her stuff up off of the floor.  The Borg Queen approves, by the way - BQ hates clutter. :)

I haven't crocheted this week.  My arms are a little sore, after moving stuff around at work and cleaning out old stuff.  I've made a lot of headway, but I still have a lot left to do.  The tendonitis is a lot better, it is never going to go away completely, but when I do stuff like shift files around it tends to act up a bit.  I'm not sure if I'm going to do any more de-cluttering/cleaning out, etc. or not this week at work.  It depends - it's not a busy office and I have a lot of down time.  I hate to be bored almost as much as I hate clutter!  The boys have learned to just stay out of my way, although 95-year-old-teenager has moments when he thinks he needs to help me.  He was in a much better mood today, no political arguments!

Frasier is a wuss.  He is seriously afraid of the electronic fly swatter that Bill has.  He usually will go outside or into the other part of the room when he sees it.  This morning, we had two stupid flies to deal with while we were at the table eating breakfast.  Bill grabbed the fly swatter and the dog saw it.  Frasier was going to go outside, but Bill (and the swatter) were between him and the door.  So, he tried to go around the other side of the table which is where I was sitting.  I grabbed his collar and he buried his face in my lap.  Then, as soon as Bill electrocuted the fly (which bounced, of all things!), I let go and Frasier more or less flew out the dog door.  He didn't come back in, about an hour later I had to go physically bring him back inside and then I had to block the dog door to keep him inside!  I opened it up before I left for work, he ran back outside and Otter said that he stayed out for a long time.  When I had to go get him, he was in the lean-to like he was hiding.

Maggie Moo was the opposite, she was crazy this morning and wanted to play.  Which we did, until I got tired of it but she would have been content to run in circles for hours.  She eventually wound down, and then I think she spent the next several hours napping.  Which is normal for her!