Thursdays on the Bench

(Cathy) So, how has everyone been this past week. I have not seen or spoken with any of you so have no idea what is happening. Is this my normal purple colour? It looks a little different. How about this purple? Hmmmm. Have I told you about the grackles? They are the black birds with iridescent heads. The past two years, once the babies have hatched, the father grackle starts to attack our dog when he is out in the backyard. I have seen the father grackle swoop down and peck at our dog who, at the time, was doing nothing other than his 'business'. Our dog became so frightened of the grackle that he started to refuse to go outside. We would have to go with him and scare the bird away. My husband wanted to get rid of the nest and the baby birds, but I said we had to wait until the nest was vacated. We did wait, however, all summer long the father grackle would sit on the fence, or on the roof, or in a tree and taunt our dog! This year they are back again. We have been removing the nest bits as they are building it. I am hoping they will become too frustrated and build a nest somewhere else! Time will tell. I love nature, however, we all have to learn to live together, in harmony!(Sunshine) We are doing well, thank you. I like the second purple colour the best. The visual image of your family trying to scare the birds away is making me laugh and its been a long week so I could use a good laugh. I hope that your grackle issue is solved soon. I have a carpenter ant problem and its been ongoing for years and I am finally fed up and so are the kids. I finally called a plethora of companies to enquire and to get quotes. The consequences is that if we do not solve the problem then it gets bigger and bigger. Also, the thought of the ants in my walls is just disgusting. Well, cha- ching, cha- ching and there goes my last two weeks pay check, so no built up savings once again. They are coming tomorrow afternoon and they will spray the entire house inside and out. They will guarantee that the problem will be fixed but only for a year. There is no long term guarantee. Sometimes the problem never reoccurs and other times it is a yearly treatment. I am at a loss as to what else to do. Mr. Sunshine has used aunt traps and aunt bait (how do your sisters feel about the traps and bait!)(I was going to fix that 'aunt' and then I saw your comment and decided to leave it, ha ha ha!) and powder and nothing seems to do the trick. Well, we have to be out of the house for 4 hours tomorrow night including the dog. Apparently once the spray settles and dries it is no longer harmful.(I find that highly suspect)Do you vacumn it up? It is supposed to be just fine for children (even with allergies) and for pets. That is what all six companies have assured me. I really hope that they are absolutely sure of this. Please wish me luck! I hope that they will find the queen aunt(??) (she is well protected behind her outer bailey, moat, inner bailey, gate house, the ants are keeping watch through the narrow windows in the towers and marching along the rampart,hiding behind the turrets. But rest assured if you can do it you will find the Queen hiding in the Keep) it really is to bad I can't write the little ones test cause I know all about medieval times. as well as any satellite nests. I know gross, gross, gross. I am not sure what a carpenter ant is? Is it a big black ant or the little ones?
Mr. Sunshine has been away now for quite some time. It has been a few weeks now with a short one day visit last weekend. I am tired and we all really miss him but so far he will be in town next week. That's all for now. Everyone be good and only two more days until the weekend. Oh, and yesterday I missed all of American Idol because Little Miss Sunshine had a test on the Medieval World. Wow! There was 70 pages of in depth information that she had to know. It was crazy! There was the Roman empire, Barbarians, Castles, Armor, Emperor Constantine, Emperor Augustine, Alfred the great (a warrior but not at heart), St Benedict, St. Patrick, The Feudal System., catacombs and a whole lot more. By the end of the night I was going a little bit loopy and Little Miss Sunshine was exhausted. I asked how she did on the test and she said that it was hard and that she did not remember if there was anything on the test that she didn't know. I am working on homework as I type with the little one and just looked up what a Fief is. For all you out there not working on grade four Medieval Times, Fief is another word for land. This is the third time that I have had to help her study for a test. She usually studies for about 20 minutes (if that) and is done. It has worked brilliantly in the past but this year the marks have been sliding so I realized that she did not know how to study for tests like this one. There is so much detail. I forgot how much work it is to help and teach good study habits. Was I successful, only the marks will tell. See you all later. I feel your pain, since it doesn't seem to matter if we study or not she always has crappy marks (the little one). I get so fustrated with her cause she really does not care so it makes it very difficult to study with her.

(Carolin) Hi all, the weather here is wonderful. I sat outside when I got home for 15 minutes just enjoying the warmth. Not much going on here, same old, same old. I am tired and always seem to have stuff to do but no complaints.
We have had a Canadian geese couple eyeing our front garden as a new home the past week or so. As much as it would be cool to see the eggs from our front window. Canadian geese can be very nasty when they are nesting and I am not sure who would win the fight the geese or Duster our cat. Speaking of Duster, he has been pretty sick for some time now. He throws up at least two times a day, not much stays down anymore and has lost some weight. The husband took him to the vet today for his rabies shot and to check him out. He is down 2 pounds, which doesn't' seem like much but he only weighed 10 pounds to start with. The vet was concerned and wants to see him in a month. He gave him a another anti vomit vaccine. So we will see what happens in the next month. Duster is 13 years old and has suffered from an over active immune system that he has been on medication for, for the last 5 years or so. We have not said anything to the girls yet as we thought we would wait till after next month and then we will have to make some hard decisions.