Cement mixers and falcons

Masters of the sky

So my granddaughter and I knew we were early to the Hutchings Museum free bird show.
Swim team practice ended at 10 a.m. and the show wasn't supposed to start until 11 a.m. — at least, that's what I thought.
I had read about it on the city website and in an email I received from the museum.
I told my daughter about it and she agreed to bring the other granddaughters and the baby and see the show with us.
I reserved a whole row of chairs and we sat down to wait.
We played a game on my phone and we waited in the shade.
Other people with little kids started to fill in the seats around us.
Only another 30 minutes to go.
Then a lady came out and pinned up a sign that said: "Bird Show at 12 and 3 p.m."
We all reacted.
"What?"
"We're sorry," the lady said. "The information on the website was wrong. The museum opens at 11 a.m. but the bird show doesn't start until noon."
"But?"

Who's there?

We all looked at one another, the 50-70 of us gathered with small children and babies in metal chairs.
"We don't want to wait another hour..."
She sensed our dismay and potential hostility and retreated inside. "Maybe they'll come out and do a mini-show," she tossed at us as she left.
We all waited fairly hopelessly. What do you do?
After another 20 minutes, the bird guy came out. Yay! He was bearing an owl on his arm and leading several other people with hawks and hooded heads.
He started to talk, to tell us to hold down the noise because the birds get worried when there's chaos.
That was just as a cement mixer on the other side of the lawn starting backing in to dump cement on a project at the Legacy Center.
The rumbling and roar made it very hard to hear.

Ben Woodruff and friend

It also made the birds nervous. They communicated their distress by fluttering and flapping as the bird man tried to tell us about them: how owls have colors only visible with black light and how falcons can drop on their prey at 300 miles an hour.
They did alright and we enjoyed the show but I'm thinking maybe there needs to be some better communication going on here between the humans.
Scheduling 101?

Baby birds and dinner

What Marc saw on the walk

We've had a lot of quail sightings this summer.
It's great.
Quails are very welcome at our house.
I love the little flip-top quails have on top of their heads and I find their funny little waddle-walk amusing.
So since they've started making our backyard, and now our porch, their home, I've been intrigued.
For a while there were two males obviously vying for the attention of the lone female in the bunch.

What a little one looks like

They'd fluff up their feathers and chuck at each other and sometimes even chase one another around the grass under the bird feeder.
The lady being sought just ignored them both for the most part.
But she must have succumbed to the attention because today we noticed a whole bunch of baby quails out following mom around the front lawn.
Dad sat on the roof chucking at them once he noticed that we noticed the little family.
We tried to get a good look but retreated when we noticed how frantic we were making everybody.
The new chicks are miniature and basically just small bits of feathers trying to get through the wet grass back to the nest (which must be under the front shrubs).
I haven't tried to get under the bushes to see them up close. 
We didn't want to stress them into moving to another home because, again, I like quail.
I think they are far cuter than the average pigeon or mourning dove that populate the back fence on a regular basis.
They are as cute as the tiny golden finches that come and hang upside down to eat.
And they definitely deserve to live and grow and chuck along in peace.
So when I came across this picture and recipe in one of the cookbooks I'm reviewing, I was indignant.

Not my kind of fine dining

How could anybody do this to a sweet, little birdie?
Who do I call?

Until the clock strikes midnight

It's really quite magical, the SCERA production of "Cinderella."
And since my husband is in the show, I couldn't officially review it but I've been given permission to laud it here on my personal blog.
I feel like it deserves praise.
It's well done and the little girls love Cinderella in her sparkly gown.
She can't get away after the show. She's signing autographs and posing for pictures long after the others have departed.
That's probably partly because her fans can't really differentiate between a Disney princess and a SCERA one.
At any rate, here's a sweet, pleasant show that fits nicely into a summer evening.
The Fairy Godmother just kind of pops up out of nowhere at the start and it goes fairly crazily from there.
The seekers are funny and do funny things.
The carriage is an effective illusion.
The glass slippers that get bigger and bigger are a humorous addition.
The prince and Cinderella make a nice couple. They have chemistry even though they really have a rapid-time romance op.
And the songs are familiar favorites, the kind that get stuck in your head.
It's nice to see Kathryn Little in a working role as the wicked stepmother.
Director Chase Ramsey has done a good job.
I just went on my own and sat back and enjoyed it rather than worrying about taking notes or keeping tabs on anything in particular.
I found I liked it a lot.
I also kind of like the king. He looks vaguely familiar though I haven't seen him up close for a while now.

My kids took all my money

Marc and I have new callings that take us to the Beehive Homes in American Fork several times a week. (He's the 1st counselor in the Branch presidency and that makes me the 1st counselor in the Relief Society.)
So we were in one of the sister's rooms the other night trying to help her reconcile her new situation.
She'd only been admitted a couple of weeks earlier and she was starting to panic.
Now, the Beehive Homes are clean and well-run and the people there seem to be well cared for.
We don't have major concerns about their well-being.
But there are a number of residents unhappy, a couple who are quite angry, about being there.
They want to be in their own homes.
They want their former lives back.
The lady we were working with on this particular night was agitated.
"I'm not sick," she cried. "Why am I here?"
As we tried to soothe her, she despaired.
"My kids took all my money and my car," she said with slumping shoulders. "I can't go anywhere."
I couldn't help but think that my father is probably saying the same things to people who visit him in the Legacy Retirement Center.
I know he believes if we just put a key back in his hand, he could be out cruising the freeway. He could be king once more.
He even says, once in a while, "I would go to (...this or that event...) but I don't have a car."
It's sad and I sympathize.
I listen to the residents we're working with and I feel their frustration.
They really don't understand what's happened, where everybody went and when they're coming back.
The same lady we were talking with wanted to know on Sunday what would happen next?
"Is that it? Do we all just sit here now and watch TV?" she demanded to know.
"Yeah, pretty much," I told her as we gathered our hymn books and purses to leave after our sacrament meeting.
I felt for her. She seems fully aware and physically capable of living on her own.
I was thinking I'd break her out if I could if I could think where to take her...
This was just before she asked me, "Are you LDS?"

A wake-up call

Yesterday was a difficult travel and shopping day.
I had run to South Jordan to visit my dad and play a fast game of Scrabble.
I did errands beforehand so I counted the sample at Great Harvest Breads as my lunch.
So by the time I was headed home on I-15 and saw the sign warning "Crash ahead. Major delays," I was hungry.
I know, I should have veered off and taken the Suncrest road home but foolishly I thought UDOT might have got it wrong. Maybe the crash was cleared up by now. Maybe it never happened.
The traffic seemed to be flowing and I couldn't see any flashing lights.
It turned out that after an hour and a half in bumper-to-bumper traffic that inched along that I NEVER saw the accident or anything to explain my situation.
I was in the middle lane which was not moving.
Then I moved to the side lane which stopped completely.
After I finally reached the exit I needed I was angry, starved and discouraged.
That was before I started down Timpanogos Highway where I found stoplights not working and people not going.
Every intersection was another exercise in faith and frustration. No one seems to remember what they learned about four-way stops in Driver's Ed.
I got to Smith's planning to grab the frozen-food items I needed for dinner and the next couple of days. But it looked all odd.
Everything was draped in plastic and the lights were turned down low. Several aisles had shopping cart-and-orange-tape gates set up.
The voice over the loudspeaker said the power outage had prompted corporate to insist that the frozen foods be sealed off. No one could buy milk or Cool Whip or juice or meat or cheese even if they wanted to take their chances.
It was kind of scary, a vision of the future that we've talked about in church disaster preparedness meetings.
I called my husband and announced that we would be having pizza for dinner.
I drove to Little Caesar's, thinking I was so smart.
Surprise. That was everyone else's idea as well. The lines were long and the overworked, young, crew members were stressed.
It took a while to get dinner.
Note to self: pizza is NOT a good disaster plan.

Causing climate change

So Marc and I held off buying and planting our tomatoes, peppers and zucchini (yes, we're going to try again!) until this past Saturday.
We, like many of you out there, thought that we'd be good planting these vegetables on Mother's Day weekend.
We, like many of you, believed the Utah winter season was really over and it would be safe.
That was before we put them in the ground when we were delusional.
So, we were alarmed when the television weatherman warned us to cover our tender plants and bring other such investments indoors.
It was Sunday night and it was getting cold and it was windy.
I had already taken down our pricey new planters and tucked them into bed next to the house.
We were warm and comfortable and in our jammies.
Now we had to scurry about and find covers for the 10 new plants that might die of exposure if left outside unattended.
We don't buy milk in the gallon containers anymore since we are empty-nesters so we didn't have any of those hanging around.
We didn't have a bunch of paper hats on hand. Blankets would be too much.
We had to scramble.
I grabbed some vases, some baskets, a couple of old trash cans, a couple of plastic cups and a box.
Here's what it looked like:

So far (it's now been two nights of worry) we haven't frozen anything black. Our strange collection of covers seems to be working. The plants look happy when we uncover them in the morning.
But we do feel like we've helped change the weather.
What are the odds that once we purchased and planted some fragile seedling that it would turn cold again, cold enough to freeze the second week in May?
But, then again, we do live in Utah.
Perhaps we should have waited another couple of weeks to plant before we kicked off a climate change.

A Mother's Day lament

I've been thinking a lot about Mother's Day this year, largely because one of my children is going through a difficult time in her life and so, consequently, am I.
I'm sad. She's sad. It's no fun for anybody.
So I've been trying to decide how to celebrate Mother's Day.
The immature, baby me wants to abandon the cause and run out into the desert to hide.
The more responsible and grown-up me thinks I should stick around and glory in the beautiful children and grandchildren who bless my life every hour and every day.
I know deep down that each child loves me and I love each of them.
But Mother's Day highlights the mothers who don't honestly exist...at least, I've yet to meet one who feels she qualifies.
I, of course, regret that I wasn't a perfect mom, that I sometimes yelled and often cried.
I wish I was that perfect lady who always had a hot meal ready, the house clean, the laundry washed and folded and enough energy to help them finish their homework even when it was 10:30 p.m.
Instead, I was more often the bag lady mom, running the kids to school with my hair all askew and my pajama bottoms dragging in the snow.
I was often late with dinner and short on temper.
I would berate the child coming too slowly out of class to the car.
I would be openly dismayed when we discovered the note in the backpack saying there was a science class project due in the morning.
It would irk me to get the call for another three dozen brownies for a class party.
I complained about going on field trips.
I loved and still love my six children. I love my six stepchildren and all 33 grandchildren.
I would do just about anything for them.
And I treasure their drawings, their handmade cards, the gifts picked out with care and a quarter.
I think being a mother and a grandmother is the very best thing to be.
I just wish we could all skip Mother's Day.