Psssst.....hey.....HEY!

Yeah. It takes me forever to soothe my own heart. Time is marching on and it's finally dawning on me that I can't stay in a hole forever. Not even one little part of the world has stopped with the death of anyone. I don't know if that's fair or not, but it's the way it is. Life goes on, like it or not. SO, I'm here and fat from overeating to plug that hole but it's ok. One foot is going in front of the other and that's a start. Now on to the news:

First, this might be just a tad on the morbid side, but it's a true, true, true story and happened in my own backyard last month. It seems I have this huge, blond hawk that lives close to me. Unfortunately, with all my feeding of the wildlife, he has chosen my backyard as his "all-you-can-eat" personal hunting ground. I have seen him sitting on the roof of my house, the roof of my car, and smack dab right in the middle of my backyard. Back to the story. The day I saw him land in the middle of the backyard, I tore out of the door and yelled at him to get away. He got away FAST and left a trail of feathers in his wake. So I turned around and got a pan of water to refill one of the birdbaths and when I passed by his landing spot, I saw the feathers. I thought, "Wow, I must have scared the beejeebers out of him", and bent down to touch the feathers. Not his. He'd killed one of my little sparrows; in fact, it was the one that always sat on my railing and bathed in a dish within 2 ft of me. I picked up his little body and just stood there for a minute cursing the hawk and then I cried. I buried the little sparrow under some bushes so he'd be left in peace. Now here's the amazing part and I swear on my life it's true. About 3 hours later, I was looking out of my upstairs window and all of a sudden this massive little cloud of sparrows came in for a landing. They covered the overhang on the roof where I was, and they covered the entire rim of the garage, AND they were on every inch of the fence. One bird made a very plaintive sound and the bird next to him lifted up and flew over to where the feathers were. He did not land, but instead he circled and circled the feathers as if in a spiral, high to low. Then he went back to his exact spot on the fence. The next bird in line did the same thing, and over and over and over they all took a turn spiral-circling the feathers on the ground. When the last bird did this and then took his exact spot back on the roof, the original bird made another plaintive sound and ALL of them rose up at the same time and left together. It was incredible. There was no doubt in my mind that I had just witnessed a "service" for their family member as they stay in their families and mate for life. Absolutely incredible and one for the books.

News #2: I have met someone. Well, sort of. Weirdest thing. I went over to Classmates to post about one of our dear friend's death, and while I was at it, I updated my profile pic but left it in black and white. I captioned it for mainly my female friends because they would get what I meant. I said, "It's a darn shame when the day comes that your photo looks better in black and white, lol". Two days later there's a message for me there. It said I didn't need to worry about how I looked. Now it works the same as any site, so I could click on that person. You know I did. And I'd never heard of him and he graduated 7 yrs before I did and from a totally different area. So I did what I'd been brought up to do and wrote a short thank you note and that's all. Two days later, another note from him. This time he's telling me how he landed on my part of Classmates and how his wife had died 2 yrs ago and that she was from my school. He gave her maiden name, and her brother's name, and I almost fainted. I may never have heard of him, but I sure did know his wife's family and the brother had been a friend of mine since elementary school. Whew, small world. So we start writing back and forth and the emails are becoming like novels. This went on every day for a month. Then all of a sudden he writes that he types with only 2 fingers and he's numb; that if I want to continue the conversation, I have to dial him. Smart, very smart. And even though I knew that was smart, I still sat there and looked at that part of the email for a good 10 minutes. Well, hell, I thought. Why not? It's only 1:30 in the morning, lol. I dialed, he picked up, no one said a word, just started laughing til it hurt. That phone call lasted until 8:30 that morning -- whew, a 7 hour call. Both of us had to switch phones from batteries dying. So that's how it started and it has stayed like that for another month. That's right -- I still haven't agreed to meet him face to face, lol. I'd like to say I'm taking it slow, but good lord. No, it's that I'm really nervous about it. Two reasons. One, the darn 30 lbs I gained (he says so what), and two, I'd promised myself 6 years ago that I wasn't going to ever date anyone again much less get involved (he says, yeah, but you don't know me yet). See? He's really playing those cards. I finally swallowed hard yesterday and asked if he wanted to go to an art show with me somewhere in the first 2 weeks of November. Mom's Bob is an artist and a gallery is doing a show for him in November. Well, he said YES. Why am I surprised. I almost thought he'd given up, but I guess not. Now I'm scared again. Sheesh, even typing about it is giving me the shakes. End of subject. I might get a heart attack.

News #3: You can’t keep a good cat down. Or off. Or down and off. There is just no such thing. This is especially true if you buy something new as I did today. On a whim of whims, I decided to do a quilt on my bed so off I went to Bed Bath and Beyond. I could live there, seriously. I came home, stripped off all the linens, put on clean sheets – because you MUST have clean sheets with a new quilt, right? Throughout the entire change I’m imploring my 2 cats to pleasssse get out of my way, as I trip over them on every walk from one side to the other of the bed. Finally, clean sheets, clean blanket, and a NEW quilt. Well, that was good for all of 3 seconds:

Own a cat? Then you can’t win.

Now that I’ve talked your ears off, I am going to sign off. Stop that, I can hear you cheering, “Tg she’s ending this”, lol. I really look forward to catching up with all of you and I’m going to start on major reading tomorrow...and that’s a promise.

XOXOXO from me to YOU