Caturday! Sort of.

A pair of mourning doves has made a nest in one of our palm trees. Here you can see Mrs. Dove sitting in the nest. The nest is actually in some of branch pieces that remain after the dead branches are trimmed off. After a while, the remaining pieces fall away on their own. Here, the pieces are hanging off the tree, but still firmly attached, and that's where they've made their home.

And home it's going to be for a while, because there are eggs in there! Here you can see them - two, which is typical for mourning doves. We're gonna have babies! (In about 15 days, that's how long it takes them to hatch.) I'll be sure to post pics of the little ones when they arrive.

Girding My Loins

I'm prepping myself for a battle of sorts. Girding my loins, as the subject line says. See, I have to go to Walmart today. We need groceries (seriously, if you looked in our fridge, you'd see a whole lotta light and not much else) and while normally I'm a Publix girl (I love me some Publix), we also need large quantities of bird seed and a hair dryer. Not for use together, I assure you. We need the birdseed because we feed two families of Sandhill Cranes. We meant to feed songbirds, but the cranes have taken over. We like them, though. But when we're out of food, they squawk rather loudly in protest. It's just best to keep them feed.

And I need a hair dryer because yesterday, as I was blow drying my hair, I heard these cracking noises and little plastic bits started shooting out the end of the hair dryer. Then the housing started to split open in my hand. I immediately yanked the cord out of the wall and tossed it. I felt like electrocution was the next step and didn't want to go there. Hence, new hair dryer is on the list. I liked my old one. If they still have it, that's probably what I'll get. I hate getting a new one because there's always a learning curve.

But wait, I'm getting off track. Walmart. I have to go to Walmart. That place is like a time suck. You go in for one thing and an hour and a half later, you've got a cart full of stuff you didn't know you needed. I must be strong. I will avoid the book section (especially since Amazon let me know this morning that my order has shipped - Undercover In High Heels is on its way!) I will avoid the make-up aisle. Mostly. There might be a new lip gloss I should have. Wait! See? It's happening already. Crap. I'm doomed.

On another note, let me offer you a small warning: Don't let your cat sit on your keyboard. Not only do they rarely add legible words of wisdom to your manuscript, but they're capable of making your computer do strange things, like the cursor highlighting everything, the right click function ceasing to function and new windows popping up everytime you try to open a link. I finally had to restart and fortunately that worked to set everything right.