Just smile

Smile, and the world smiles with you ...

This is a chayote or mirliton squash, used commonly in South Louisiana.

I've never cooked one. Raw, the chayotes have a crunchy texture, somewhat like jicama, that Lucy loves.

Lyman's mother's birthday is March 5. She's had a rough go of it so far this year and needs a homemade birthday cake.

She likes Italian cream, but she took part of the one I made in November.

Suggestions?

Sort of funny positive thing, the kind of thing that can happen when civil and rational people gather, is that we are cooking family dinners that include Lyman's son Michael and my brother Charles.

Michael and Charles enjoy each other's company tremendously. Charles is gay. Michael is not. Charles is 61. Michael is 38. Charles is in many ways conservative. Michael is not. But they are both quick-witted and like to laugh.

We had one such dinner Friday. Lyman and Michael cooked (what's not to like). The menu was seafood stew -- a tad different from gumbo, a blanched vegetable salad with vinaigrette, and bread. Cocktails.

Conversation included Southern manners, Mardi Gras, "Brokeback Mountain" (Charles liked it), Larry McMurtry, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Gary Gilmore, the death penalty (all against), black-white relations in the South, Monroe, LA, Jackson, MS, the paucity of stylish men's hats in the area, tuxedos (Charles needs one, Michael saved a Playboy with ads), and high-maintenance Dallas women. There was more.

Michael and Charles are planning a day-trip to Baton Rouge to visit gentlemen's clothing stores and Tony's Seafood, and maybe do lunch at Phil's.

Lyman and I look at each other and shrug.

Charlie visited the veterinarian on Friday.

It was just a routine visit to trim his beak and toenails, and accustom him to riding and the office.

It went off without a hitch, though it was a match wrestling him into the Pet Pocket.

He was well-behaved and obedient, if a little leery of the Dremel and clippers.

Lucy is welcome to visit the office for a few hours a week if it's necessary.

You'll be wanting to keep an eye on Chris at The Big Yellow House.

She has bought her own domain name and will be moving the blog in the future. The new name will be "notes from the trenches/motherhood: where the insurgents wear diapers."

I'll make changes when she moves her blog over.

Great pictures at the top of the blog of her seven children. Surely she didn't get them all that clean at once.

Apparently, when people imagine their names on the bottom of the checks that are going out, they will take a stand against ignorance, inefficiency and possible corruption.

At the meeting on Saturday, 75% of the owners voted to table the motion on voting on the budget. No vote until the May meeting and we get more information.

COMMUNICATION, COMMUNICATION, COMMUNICATION! -- Daniel Craven, Esq., Condo Owner magazine, Summer 2005 (I still have that article, Bubba. Did I hear that you tried to block the motion to table the vote? That someone with a Robert's Rules called you out on that one?)

Reports are that the meeting was chaotic, the president of the board broke down (them unjust winds of criticism, again), and the pudgy little Craven lawyer was flustered.

They were lucky owners didn't show up with pitchforks, tar and feathers.

Many of the owners are sophisticated, reasonable people. We know that conditions have changed, and there will necessarily be increases in condo fees to cover higher insurance rates and uncovered reconstruction expenses.

Of several budget items that were questioned, no one had answers in real numbers. The budget was based on estimates and guesses. The budget was due, according to Alabama Condo Law, 30 days before the beginning of the fiscal year, which is Jan.1 in our case.

Give me serenity.

UPDATE: I cannot believe that this board would act so irrationally unless there is some funny money out there somewhere.

Here's a product for you.

You can find something new everyday.

OK, kids. We have another egg.

The schedule looks like this, one egg per date:

1/21
1/24
1/29
2/5
2/8
2/13
2/19
2/24

LSU, Dr. Debbie Guillory, Craig Johnson, I, and my elegant Floridian correspondent, Carolyn Swicegood, are pretty much at a loss.

It's not healthy for Lucy. She looks all right, but this can't go on for long.

Let's move along. This week we are watching the Olympics.

Sasha Cohen fell. But who can match her grace?

Lyman's disappointed. "She let the rest of them out," he said.

Carolina Kostner came close to hitting the wall. She is one of the tallest skaters in the event. She is 5'6".

If I seem edgy, short, or mean, your perceptions are right.

The people who can cross me most are on the job again -- the condo board. They want to raise our fees, and they will, above any other in the area. Do it illegally, too. To cover their incompetence.

I won't go to another meeting. I nearly vibrated apart at the last one.

I am a freaking mutant. I didn't understand you in the first place, and I damned sure can't understand this kind of stupidity and meanness.

Don't mind me. I talk to birds.

Among the people who are welcome to call me Janis is Sean Kinsell. Here is one reason why.

After perusing Miss Carolyn's (Swicegood) materials, I'm thinking of asking Dr. Debbie if the clinic will give Lucy a job.

Could be that one of Lucy's problems is that she is too self-centered. Ms. Swicegood thinks that over-producing birds are in a rut, and would do well to have distractions.

Lucy enjoyed the clinic. She was very attentive to the other animals and the people there.

If we could wrangle up a good off-the-floor cage, perhaps Lucy could spend a couple of hours there two or three times a week. The clinic is about ten minutes up the road.

Dr. Debbie owns a blue-and-gold macaw herself that she would like to take in sometimes.

Hmmmm.

UPDATE: Lucy is a good traveler and has been accustomed to travel. She hasn't been anywhere since she was escorted by the police from her condo in May of '05.

Charlie has been an upset to her. The high-dominance action hasn't abated around here since he was brought in. Believe me, this is tricky stuff.

Something completely different might be a good prescription.

And, according to Ms. Swicegood's materials, I wasn't off at all about the dummy eggs.

Well, now.

Lyman sometimes gets irritated with me about this site. Usually because I don't jump when he calls.

So he's reading something on his fantasy baseball site tonight. It's a sweet paragraph about a 93-year-old man introducing his girlfriend to the group.

Lyman said, "The [writer]guy calls it a blog, but it's not a blog."

"The guy calls it a blog, it's a blog. It's really just a way of organizing thoughts. Why do you say it's not a blog?"

"Because you can't comment on it or respond in any way. That's not a blog. And he's in it for money."

So there you are.

UPDATE: One for you, Jeff Jarvis.

Ms. Swicegood, a resource for the chronic egg-laying problem, sent an e-mail asking some questions some time back.

I answered her e-mail on Feb 11 and received no response. I re-sent the e-mail today. She did not see my second e-mail.

She is burning up the wires tonight. I have a lot of reading to do.

Who is doing the greetings for spam?

I received an "offer" from marketing company MRG today. Opening line is "Jan,".

Nobody calls me "Jan". I don't hate it, but I don't respond to it. I've never been called that name. If you want my attention, call me "Janis" or "Sweetie Girl". And if you don't know me at all, I prefer to be called "Ms. Gore". "Ms. Davenport" will do. I'll let you know when you can call me Janis, much less Jan.

You're so vain, I bet you think this song is about you ...

I am posting this cartoon again because Kim and others might not have seen it, and I like it. Click and drag.

charlietail

Of what possible biological advantage can that red tail be? It's not a male thing. Female and male greys look alike with a few very subtle differences in build.

Or is it just one of those decorative elements from generous nature?

You know, it's been eight years since I've had a picture taken for my driver's license. Here, they let you renew once by mail, and send a sticker for the back of the license you have.

What bothers me about growing older is not my face cracking up or the sag here or there. It's that the bills seem to come so much closer together. Seems I barely finish writing one batch of checks when they start rolling in again.

The woman at the city office where I pay our utility bill seems so familiar I think I should invite her for coffee or something.

Yikes! I need to go renew my driver's license. Now!

Tomorrow brings a late fee of $15.

UPDATE: Well, that picture encourages me to obey the traffic laws. Don't want to be flashing that around.

I know jack about guns or hunting. I think I might have seen one of those fancy Perazzi shotguns. I've never held or pointed a gun outside of my childhood cowgirl days. Dale Evans, anyone?

So I've been a little curious about the shot Cheney used. How big? How heavy?

The article here has a chart listing the various sizes of bird- and buckshot with weights. 7-1/2 shot is about half the diameter of a BB and 14% as heavy, in lead. Pellets are also produced in steel and bismuth (via Terry Oglesby).

UPDATE: It is illegal to hunt waterfowl in Louisiana using lead pellets. Ducks will eat pellets. Lead poisons the ducks, the water, and the ground. In some areas, it's illegal to use lead on small landbirds, too. I haven't checked that, yet.

Lyman, in his last hunting days, used steel pellets. Lyman thinks hunters upped the caliber by a half to make up for the lighter weight of the pellets.

Lyman got tired of getting up before dawn and being cold. He stopped hunting then. He used Browning shotguns. 12 gauge.

Go take a look at James Joyner's storybook pup. She's a doll.

I take BirdTalk magazine.

In the classifieds, breeders are listed by state.

I'm considering sending an e-mail to breeders in the hurricane zone inquiring if they've experienced odd behavior this year. Or last.

What is the most efficient method of sending out that e-mail? We're talking maybe 30-50 addresses.

Could the hurricanes have had an effect on laying behavior? I think we can be confident that a least a portion of the bird population along the coast was lost to inclement weather.

Or could it be this ridiculously mild winter we've had?

Craig Johnson tells me that he has a rescued blue-and-gold macaw in his aviary sitting seven eggs. (Normal clutch there is 3-5.)

Whether one is a scientist or the most grounded fundamentalist, it's important to acknowledge that there are subtle influences out there that we don't know about.

I wonder what laying patterns might happen in wild birds in this part of the country this spring?

UPDATE: Are other vets and breeders seeing abnormal behaviors? We can check on that.

A normal Eclectus clutch (number of eggs to nest) is two.

Lucy now has two dummies in the cage that aren't going anywhere. Just maybe, that will signal that she can stop laying now.

Whoa, doggies!

The vet called today. The solution for the hormone therapy costs $700 a cc. Lucy's therapy would require 1-1/2 cc.

Her opinion is that the stuff is too expensive for something that might not work.

I explained my dummy system. She told me to report back to her on it. We agree that it can't do harm.

In the meantime, it's a question of keeping her well-nourished and well-supplied with cuttlebone or mineral blocks for calcium.

Lucy21706

Jim likes an occasional picture of Lucy.

So here's Lucy wishing Dr. Smith quick recuperation from his broken rib -- caused by a coughing fit.

Lucy laid the egg around 9 p.m.

UPDATE: When she settled on her sleeping perch, I substituted another dummy for the egg. The egg weighed 18 grams.

Lucy seems fine today. Was it just an upset stomach, or crop, or whatever? I need a good book on bird physiology.

I must give a compliment to young Chars. Once he was made alert to the fact that he should leave Lucy alone yesterday, he did.

And all day long, he talked about the sweetie girl.

I have taken the idiot hit counter off. 10,000. Ain't that cool?

Now, how do I get out of the database?

UPDATE: There we are.

So, I took Lucy back to our dark bedroom, and placed her on the flat tray beneath the t-stand. We stayed back there for an hour or so.

I gentled her and petted her, and now she seems bright-eyed, is eating and drinking water. And fussing.

Lucy hasn't regurgitated for 4 hours, but she still appears to be in pain. Dr. Debbie is in Monroe watching her daughter perform in a rodeo. She will call when she is able.

The weather has flipped in the last day or two. My research on egg-binding indicated that a swift change in weather can bring on unhappy conditions.

Come to think of it, the December fiasco happened during similar conditions.

Hold tight, Lucy.

Wait, is that a breakthrough?

No. It's not. We're overwriting files, and and I've found it's not just me.

Is this thing working yet?

In good news, we had a family conference yesterday in Lyman's dad's hospital room. Hospital workers were there, reporting on Big Daddy's progress, and advising the family on what will be necessary when he goes home.

He will be evaluated Monday for possible release.

Lucy is up to 454. No egg yet.

When she's ready, she'll crawl down her ladder into her cage and wander around looking for a place to lay.

I'll put a 1/4-folded handtowel in the bottom. She'll settle on it until she lays. She'll rest there until she is ready, then will return to her sleeping perch.

At least, that's the routine.

I'm glad that the Corpus Christi Caller-Times is defending itself on the Cheney story.

The Caller-Times is an old Texas newspaper with a good reputation as a news organ and as a place to work.

I was offered a position there as a copy editor shortly after I graduated from SMU. I turned it down with great regret because my father was terminally ill and I felt it was no time to leave my parents. Otherwise, I would have gone there in a snap.

A conscientious organ, it would have been a terrific training ground. It was just too long a drive.

Now, I agree that the news should have gone out sooner. But to whom? You'd have wound up with a bunch of camera trucks sitting outside the ranch and the Corpus Christi hospital, with reporters growing wider-eyed and more hysterical by the minute.

We saw it around the hurricanes, and we saw it during the mining accident.

Campbell Brown might have been a good reporter in the circumstance. She is a girl local to an area with a passel of relatives and family friends who hunt. She could've kept perspective.

But she's a busy woman.

UPDATE: Gary, the paper might have been responding to NBC's David Gregory in this Time story:

McClellan endured two of his testiest briefings ever, with NBC's David Gregory saying at an off-camera morning briefing that the Administration neglected its duty to put out the information and that White House reporters "don't care if some ranch owner calls a local paper." McClellan accused Gregory of grandstanding: "Hold on. Cameras aren't on right now. You can do this later." That infuriated Gregory. "You don't have to yell," McClellan said. Gregory shot back: "I will yell. If you want to use that podium and try to take shots at me personally, which I don't appreciate, then I will raise my voice, because that's wrong." McClellan said: "Calm down, David."

And Howard Kurtz quoting New Republic's Ryan Lizza:

But still, I'm having trouble getting worked up. Some of the criticism of the White House is a tad disingenuous. Reporters usually complain that the Bushies control all information. Now they are complaining that news of the event was first relayed by eyewitness Katharine Armstrong rather than the veep's official spin team. Some of my good friends are White House reporters, but some of their whining seems driven as much by the Bush press corps' famous sense of entitlement--we must be the first to know or the country will be kept in the dark!--as it is by any high-mindedness about the public being properly informed.

And here's a story from Editor & Publisher, with a quote from one of the Caller-Times reporters:

When asked about the White House press corps' continued grilling of Press Secretary Scott McClellan, the pair supported the ongoing interest, but disagreed with the harsh approach. "We need to ask every question we can think of," Powell noted. "But until someone has proven themselves untrustworthy, I don't think we need to act like pit bulls. That makes us look bad."

For Garcia, the job of the Washington reporters is "to get to the bottom of things." But, she added, "I don't understand why they are so upset about it."

She also had a message for those larger news outlets who have hinted that the Caller-Times should not have been the first called with the story, and perhaps could not cover it completely: "Sometimes it seems that they think we can't handle it, but we can and we did everything right."

UPDATE: My conclusion is that Ms. Armstrong should have called the Caller-Times on Saturday night.

Now Charlie has started with the big yawns.

Birds had baths today, and rats if I don't think Lucy has another egg in her tract, just above her vent.

I'll add another of the dummies to the one in the cage if such is the case.

The scale confirms at 450, after snacks.

That will make nine eggs since December, including the two troublesome ones. Seven since Jan 21.

That hormone therapy is looking better all the time.

Charlie and the boys are stepping up and stepping out.

We've started work on Hank Williams' Hey, good-lookin.

I like the shape of the toe of this shoe, Kim, but the heel is too high.

Sorry about the lack of a Valentine's Day post. I exhort you to show you care everyday.

As it happens, we usually conflate my birthday with vday. I picked up a cheap pot of six beautiful red tulips the other day to keep my boys off the hook. They were lovely. I was happy.

Lyman brought in a gloxinia.

I don't need a dozen roses.

Very quietly, because the blind hasn't been raised yet, Charlie is singing:

"The birdies, the bird is the word ... sweetie bird ... the bird is a boy, sweetie boy ... bird is a sweetie girl ... the bird, the bird, the bird is the word ... sweetie pie bird ... Charlie is a sweetie pie boy ... oh, oh, oh, sweetie pie bird ..."

Much in contrast with knocking that wooden egg against the cage grate during the night, which has all the charm of a cat with a marble at 3:30 a.m.

He created that little "oh, oh, oh" all by himself.

Lucy is at 423 today, which is more in line with the proper weight for Eclectus.

What the ...? Lucy laid another egg. Just a few minutes ago. She has gone straight back to her perch tonight. She's never been interested in sitting these eggs.

Charlie's already been at it. I estimate it at 18 g. by the shell.

UPDATE: And I replaced it with the big dummy.

Fake eggs

Is it real? Or is it Memorex?

Not too bad. Poach one of these for your foie gras, baby.

I haven't done any brushwork for a long time. I liked it.

UPDATE: Had I thought about it, I could have dragged out the Dremel and smoothed some edges. I'm worthless anymore.

And this is why you should be reading kitchen hand.

Now what? Lucy weighed in at 441 g. today, same time of day.

That's my girl.

My sister sent me a birthday card:

"Did you ever think that maybe you're just a big WEIRDO and nobody's telling you?"

Bookcase

See the cabinet portion of the case? Much better with a solid length of wood atop there.

The wood is willow, unstained, finished with linseed oil.

My mother looked after my niece, Shannon, while her parents worked many years ago.

She was a beautiful, sweet baby. Now she is a teacher with children of her own.

My brother Charles was around, too.

She always called him "Chars." Charlie is named after a different Charles.

We've been trying to make the distinction between the sweet boy and sweet girl. "Charlie is a sweetie boy. Lucy is a sweetie girl."

Oddly enough, what you hear right now is "Chars is a sweetie pie bird."

Good dammit!

I'm showing 55 readers and not one of you has a recommendation for a safe coloring for the eggs?

Reason enough to close this blog right now.

Child-safe paints are good enough.

Charles and I talked a bit about Dallas last night. We remembered a Christmas party in a North Dallas matron's house. Twenty people in a room, and no one heard a laugh.

I am so glad to be rid of that place.

I need to get my sister out of there.

Michael and blue dog

Two dogs, Blue Dog.

The one on the left is Michael, dressed for a Mardi Gras ball. Very '70's.

He sure do make a mean grilled asparagus.

UPDATE: That bizarrely placed light switch behind him is there because I wanted the bookcase to be twelve feet long, rather than nine. But the top of the cabinet could be made with one length of wood at nine feet.

Wooden eggs

Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.

Our woodworker friend milled these eggs to spec from hardwoods. I need to find a white paint safe for birds. Lucy needn't lose another egg to Charlie's beak.

Look, if birds on a golf course can sit stray golf balls, who's to say Lucy mightn't, in the back of her mind, be satisfied with a dummy?

Well, damn.

After Lucy laid the last egg she weighed 438 g. She's back up to 450 now.

(Have I mentioned what a good guy Chef Tony is?)

Hands down, best birthday celebration ever. Just lacked my sister.

Encore!

I've shortchanged my newfound Internet friend, Kim, at Frothing at the Mouse.

If you haven't been visiting, you missed her watercolor here.

I admire people who practice the arts.

Maybe Europeans are a lot more subtle than I am, but my son and I both noted that the peace dove looked a lot like the symbol of the Third Reich. (We were watching the Olympic opening.)

I suspect a choreographer forgot the negative space, but I am just a Louisianan. Or perhaps it showed better in the stadium than on the television screen.

(For Kim and others: I speak in shorthand about Lyman's boys. They become my sons, just for convenient reference.)

Charlie and I have birthdays tomorrow. Charlie will be one. I will be 49.

We're pretty happy creatures. The only thing that might improve our lives is to get our Lucy leveled out.

Also, neither one of us can sing worth a rat. We get points for sincerity, but nothing for key, or pitch, or tone.

So we've been sending out prayers and good wishes for Francesca to sing in our place tomorrow. We have much to be thankful for.

Kitchen Hand has started a meme that I've played into and will continue here.

The theme is: Things I never ate as a kid.

There I mentioned raw oysters, which I didn't have until I was 21. I can add boiled crawfish at 31 at Ralph and Kacoo's in Dallas. (Finally made sense to come to the source.)

Commenters there speak of growing up with oxtails and tongue.

Those I didn't have until I boarded in the house of the alumni director of Reed College '75-76. I was about 18.

The director's mother lived in the house, too. She was about 86 (maybe 76?) at the time, mostly blind, and a wonderful cook. She had learned her skills at about the turn of the 20th century and developed them for decades.

She made beautiful dark brown gravies, sumptuous legs of lamb, delicate soups -- anything she turned her hand to was to devour with pleasure.

I was too self-absorbed at the time to take advantage of being near her.

She made the first oxtail soup I ever had, and the first tongue. She taught me that if you're going to kill an animal, say grace, and use every part of it. They were delicious.

I tried to cook tongue once, a long time ago, and was so disappointed that I never tried again. Now it's out of the question. Mudbugs are okay in this household, but not tongue. As for oxtails -- I might try now that I'm a better cook, but I'm not counting on it holding a candle to hers.

Wherever you are ma'am, thank you. If I said it everyday then, I didn't say it enough.

How about you?

PS. Oh, did I say? The alumni director was a woman.

Dumb ole boys.

Yesterday, Charlie wanted Lucy to preen his head. (Yeah, Jack, after what I've been through.)

He would say "Sweetie Boy" then bow his head toward her for preening.

Lucy would have nothing to do with him.

"Charlie," I said, "you might be more successful if you said 'Sweetie Girl' when you do that."

And he did.

Not that he was more successful. Can't teach the boy timing.

Just returned from carrying Lyman's dad his newspaper.

He hadn't been out of physical therapy long, so he was a little disappointed.

"I am so weak," he said.

"You are so impatient," I said. "It will take time."

But he's been eating, his wit is keen, and his color is good.

One natural factor seems to be level of darkness. We can increase that by not turning on the "Lucy light" in the evening, and leaving the blind shut later in the morning.

Mary, on the message board at Land of Vos, said that her avian vet recommended putting a nest box in the cage, and letting her prolific young layer (3.5 years) sit on her infertile eggs for the full cycle, about 28 days.

When the cycle was complete, Mary removed the nest box and Cabby ceased to lay.

My brother was taken aback by Charlie's voice. It's deep and gravelly.

"It's odd to hear that deep voice say 'Sweetie Boy'," he said.

One of the values of this blog to me is that it also serves as an online diary.

When I wrote to Miss Laurella about Lucy's matter, I went to my blogger file and pulled up all the references to Lucy+egg. The dates are within a day. I could be fairly precise.

Of course, I could be more precise if I noted the date and time in a book, but it doesn't serve to watch her quite that closely.

There it is. Another beautiful egg from Lucy.

She has laid her beak on the floor of the cage and is resting now.

That's what she did last time. This is exhausting for her.

All right! Enough! If I don't get some responses on Lucy's matter, I'm calling Martha Stewart, and that's that!

UPDATE: This really might not be such a bad idea. Martha is very fond of her hens.

Does anyone here have experience raising laying hens? How did you handle over-production?

Aha! Now Charlie's head is bobbing with "the bird is the word."

This boy needs a musician with him.

I've sent an e-mail to Ms. Desborough regarding Lucy.

Let's see if she has advice. Or will give it freely.

UPDATE: I've appended that e-mail to one to Ms. Swicegood.

Ms. Swicegood has been kind enough to respond in the past.

In other parrot news, Charlie is nattering on. He doesn't lack self-esteem.

"Sweetie, sweetie, sweetie boy."

"Sweetie girl."

"The b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-bird is the word.

"Sweetie birdies, birdies, birdies."

"Sweetie, sweetie, sweetie birds."

And on. And on. And on.

Lucy is back up to 464-5 g.

The vet will try to put a call through to LSU and see what the avian department there has to say.

What to do?

My sister, a typically reliable woman who works in an office, sent me an e-mail with an attachment of a video featuring a sexy window washer doing the window of a beauty salon.

Well, the darn thing keeps coming. It's shown up now well over a hundred times.

What to do?

The file is smack-the-pony.wmv.

UPDATE: Never mind. I went to the server at bellsouth.net and deleted the file. Just a silly glitch, apparently.

Paula Deen doesn't care. She's wearing an apron: "Country cookin' makes ya good lookin'."

She puts me in mind of my sister.

Because I have an excellent mechanical friend in Chef Tony, I have this fine scale for birds.

I expected this egg. Lucy weighed in at 450 grams a day or two ago and today she weighed 466.

She doesn't eat Hersheys.

Egads, Lucy has laid another egg.

I need some help here. She will kill herself at this rate.

Rock-and-roll, bugaloo(hootchikoo?). Lordy, lordy, light my fuse.

Mick Jagger, jerk that he is, do not look like an insurance salesman.

If I had the money, I'd be there.

UPDATE: Excuse me if I am repeating myself. I saw the Rolling Stones and the Eagles and Blues Image at the Dallas Cotton Bowl in 1975. Worst sunburn of my life. That was, count'em, 31 years ago. And Mr. Jagger hasn't changed much.

Lucy has seemed a little low. It's a bad case of unrequited love.

But my bro cheered her a lot last evening. He said, "You are so pretty. How did you get so pretty? Where did you get that red?

"I think I'd like to take you to Sherwin-Williams and match your color for my dining room. We'll start a new trend. We'll call your color Lucy Red."

Michael said, "That's right. Lucy Red #22."

I do believe I think too much about Mostly Cajun.

The other day I laid down for a nap and had a dream. I was invited to a party in a big house for people with "special pets." I took Lucy because she is so pretty and Charlie because he is funny and smart.

There was a great, fluffy, soft orange cat at the party. She flipped onto her back to present her belly for rubbing. She said, "Beautiful cat."

UPDATE: Or I might be thoroughly going out of my mind.

What a lovely dinner.

Crackling fire, good food and good company. Life can't get better than that.

"Brokeback Mountain," huh.

Oh, well.

My brother is coming tomorrow for oyster and artichoke soup and Rockefeller.

By the way, he voted for Kerry.

UPDATE: I know nothing about Ang Lee, but I have always liked Larry McMurtry.

Lyman went to see his dad this afternoon.

He was chipper. Lyman said he wouldn't hush up. He took the paper, which his papa promptly started reading, and then the papa commenced a bunch of questions regarding the Tigers, etc.

Maybe we've turned a corner.

And yes, he has been eating. He was given an appetite stimulant. I don't do magic.

Sodium content of foods.

My reference.

Aha!

I still have some satsumas in the refrigerator, and they're still juicy and tasty.

I've peeled and sectioned several.

That should be a good treat, yes?

Or how about, "Big Daddy, if you don't start eating I AM going to come over here and force feed you."

I also told him to think about something he might like to eat.

"I can't think of a thing, right now."

"I don't believe you. You can think of something. You've thought of something every other day I've been married to your son. I'm taking orders and I deliver. For free.

"Until you think of something for me to bring, you have to eat what they give you here. Do you hear me?"

"I hear you."

"Good. You need to drink water, too.

"I think you're just mad because you can't come mess up my kitchen."

UPDATE: Only restriction is keeping salt under a 1000 milligrams a day.

Gotta go with Dr. Joyner on on this one.

"I am" might be the name of Yahweh, but it's also a common usage in introductions.

"Hello. I am Janis Gore."