Happy Anniversary, Key Dear!

Today is the wedding anniversary of Key Dear and Mr. Bill. Congratulations, you two, happy anniversary! You have hung in there through thick and thin and you are still together.

Is it thirty years this year?

Bluebird babies have flown

Our most visible bluebird pair has successfully raised three youngsters this Spring. This photo is of two of them; the third is to the left on the other wheel, out of the shot. It was very exciting to see the three juveniles flying around the yard with the adult pair of bluebirds. In another week or so they'll be able to feed themselves, which may give the pair a chance to raise another clutch this summer.

The D's have a robin's nest in a large evergreen shrub next to their front door. They also have several hummingbirds!

Miss H is Sweet Sixteen

Today is the Younger Pea's 16th birthday! She is having some friends sleepover on Saturday, so that will be her party day, but it's official today, so...

Happy Sweet Sixteen, YP!

Enjoy your day!

Old Sturbridge Village

For all the time I've been in MA, there are so many places I've never seen. Old Sturbridge Village was one. Cousin E was in Amherst this past weekend with husband C and son D (C is coaching soccer), and we arranged to meet at OSV yesterday. What a fun visit. We lucked out with the weather, which has been alternately humid or pouring rain and lightning/thunder. The weather set in later in the afternoon, but for the mid-day hours we spent walking around it was fine.

OSV is an interesting place, representing an early New England farm village. The workers are not hardcore about old-tyme speaking like Plimoth Plantation, which makes it easier to ask questions and understand the answers. We didn't see all the animals, but I understand they breed heritage sheep, chickens and pigs. D was very good for the first couple hours, but really, at 2-1/2, enough is enough. In another year I think he'll be totally into places like this. Meanwhile, it was so great to be able to see E and spend a couple hours walking around and catching up. I don't get to see her or any of the family nearly as often as I would like and I miss them.

Celtics win NBA Championship

Game 7 is now officially moot. The Celtics clobbered the LA Lakers last night 131-92 to win their first NBA Championship in 22 years. The "Big Three", Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, were big indeed, but everyone contributed. Rajon Rondo had quite a night. Though he shot only 8-for-20 from the field, Rondo spearheaded Boston's superior defensive effort, finishing with six steals (including one monster rip from the hands of the 6-foot-10, 230-pound Lamar Odom) to go with his 21 points, eight assists and seven rebounds. For the Big Three, this was the first NBA title for each of them, and the first for the league's most-decorated franchise since the original Big Three of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish won No. 16 in 1986. Danny Ainge was the point guard for that team and the general manager for the one that won 66 games a season after winning 24 -- the biggest turnaround in NBA history. The Celtics join the 1975 Golden State Warriors and the '77 Trail Blazers as the only teams to win it all a year after missing the playoffs. I would have given Garnett the MVP instead of Pierce, but what do I know.

The last few days have brought cooler weather and rain, some even hard enough to knock the Pine pollen right out of the trees. This is good, since we were getting tired of everything, and I do mean everything, being covered in layers of sticky yellow dust. I dusted last Wednesday and by Thursday morning, you wouldn't have known anything had been cleaned at all.

PopPop is golfing today, proudly wearing his new golf shirt received from the Peas. He had been doing pretty well this year and he's off to a much better start than last year.

Tomorrow will be the Younger Pea's last day of school for the summer. Both Peas are hoping to get some kind of summer job and have submitted applications to several places.

Happy Father's Day

I got PopPop a mattress pad for his bed; hopefully that will alleviate some of the discomfort he feels when laying on his side. The Peas got him some socks, which he always needs, and a really nice golf shirt. Later in the afternoon we went up the street to Dan's for a 50th birthday gathering. There was lots of food and drink, live music and good company, and the weather had cleared enough that we could be out in the yard. His younger daughter played a couple songs on the electric piano and a group of guests sang his favorite hymn. It was a lot of fun.

The Celtics played well, but lost game five 103-98. Games six (and seven, if needed) will be played in Boston, where the Celtics should be able to close the deal. DamCat's brother has tickets to game six, so it would be great if they won that night.

More backyard critters

Actually, it does get more exciting. At about 9:30am I saw a turtle making her way up the yard. She was really plowing along. I thought she might be a red-bellied cooter, which is an endangered turtle in MA, but is known to live in Plymouth County (and pretty much nowhere else in MA). She turned out to be a painted turtle, which is not a threatened species, but it was an interesting couple hours none-the-less.

I got several photos of the turtle while she was on her trek up the yard. She wasn't much interested in either me or Ebony, and Ebony was far more interested in stalking a leaf. I didn't know how the turtle was going to get over the rocks ahead, but she seemed to know where she was going, so I let her be and went back to washing the kitchen floor.

I looked for her to be near the road every 10 minutes or so, but didn't see her. By 10:30am I was getting nervous, because this turtle was moving with great purpose and it seemed unlikely she would not have made it to the street by now. I went out to see if I could find her, and I did - she was digging a hole at the edge of the neighbor's driveway, just outside our front lawn. I didn't see her lay any eggs, but whatever she did didn't take long. The cover-up process took a good 45 minutes and was really interesting to see. By the time she was done, you would never know she had been there, dug a hole, laid eggs and covered them. By 11:30am she was done and on her way back to the pond.

I'm thinking I'll dig the eggs up tomorrow and move them to a safer location.

Our male Baltimore Oriole is a nosy bird, he was always in a branch just above me, watching what I was doing and singing his heart out. He's pretty good company.

At about 5pm, the gray fox reappeared. This time PopPop saw her too. She headed off toward conservation in Hanson, the same direction the last fox I saw went. I wonder if this is one of the pups. I'll try to get a photo of her, since she seems to have a late afternoon routine.

I suppose the raccoon will be back tonight...

Weather and critters

The humidity has finally dissipated, though the temperature is still on the high side. The past four days have been oppressively hot and humid; today will be lovely by comparison. I took this screenshot from my AccuWeather toolbar this morning before someone realized that 89F might not really be a temperature one should call "colder", even compared to 98F from yesterday.

The wildlife keeps showing up in the yard. The snapper wasn't here yesterday, but she had come back three mornings in a row. Still no evidence of eggs, PopPop thinks the soil in the garden is too hard for her. At about 3:30pm yesterday I was on the deck, hoping to catch even the tiniest breeze, when I saw a beautiful gray fox making his way past the arborvitae toward the house. Knowing Lucille hides in the arborvitae, I told the fox that this behavior would not do. He thought about that for a moment, then obligingly turned around and trotted back to the woods. I'm wondering if s/he might be the offspring of the fox I saw two summers ago. Regardless, this one was big and healthy.

The cats have been very flat these last few days, it's too hot for them to do much of anything. Last night, Ebony was laying in front of the porch door when, at about 9pm, she jumped up and started posturing. She is known as a hisser and a tail wagger, but this was different. Then I heard the outdoor water dish dragging and knew something was up. By the time I got the lights on and stuck my head out the door, the enormous raccoon that was into the water had moved down to the lower deck. He was another big, beautiful animal. Chubba had been laying under the bench not two feet from the water dish the whole time, completely unfazed by the raccoon. At least this one seems healthy enough, he's out at night and isn't aggressive.

Then half an hour later, going out to help Queenee with her purse, I almost stepped on one of the garden toads, a big fat one. That would have grossed me out for a good long time.

Does life get more exciting than this?

My body is resetting itself

For five years after my little boob surgery and nine weeks of radiation, I took Tamoxifen every day. There was a brief respite when I had my knee surgery, but I made up for that with an extra month or so tacked on at the end. So this past February, when my last refill was finished, I had a glass of cheap sparkling wine and toasted the end of having to take Tamoxifen. One less drug to take, hooray! In fairness, I didn't seem to suffer through some of the more aggravating side effects that many women have, and other than the weird discharge and artificial menopause, don't have much to complain about. Even the night sweats and hot flashes weren't too bad.

The discharge stopped less than two months after I was off the drug, more cause for celebration. And now...my period has returned with a vengeance.

Menstruation has always been something of a non-event for me. I hardly ever had cramps and barely had any symptoms at all, the occasional lower back pain and breast tenderness aside. To be honest, most of the time I barely had a period; it never lasted more than two days and wasn't much then.

I bet I've lost as much blood these past three days as I did in ten years. It's crazy. Still no cramps, no pain, no symptoms other than a virtually constant trickle of blood. While I don't mind the return of my red friend, I sure hope this is the big show and that things will get back to normal soon.

The downside is that eventually I will get to go through menopause all over again. Sigh.

EP graduates from High School

The Elder Pea is officially graduated from high school! The class speakers were good, but the school superintendent sounded like she was on a book tour. The band played well, despite sitting in the hot sun with all those nice shiny metal instruments. All in all it was a fine graduation. Congratulations, EP!

It was an oppressively hot day, over 90F, but I only saw one poor elderly woman have to be taken to the hospital. Someone thought ahead and had plenty of cold water and ice available, which was a godsend to most of us. I slathered myself with sunscreen and wore a wide brim hat, so I ended up fine, but poor Damcat got very pink. Queenee moved from the metal bleachers to a seat in a tent where she could stay cool and get her foot elevated and iced. PopPop and I agreed that standing anywhere was better than sitting on those bleachers, so we stayed on our feet through most of the ceremony.

In sporting news, the Red Sox beat Seattle 11-3, and Big Brown lost the Belmont to 38-1 Da'Tara. He didn't seem to be injured, just pooped, and rather than see the horse overextend himself, Kent Desormeaux eased off the throttle and they finished last.

Wild Kingdom

PopPop and I first spotted this coyote about a month ago, very early in the morning. Today he was back and after Lucille. PopPop was in the barn and didn't hear a thing, but I heard Lucille raising a real fuss and stood up to see what was going on. I didn't see Lucille, but the coyote was standing right behind the corner of the deck. Once he saw me through the window, he trotted off. I grabbed the video camera and got a few seconds of him making his exit. No doubt he'll be back. Meanwhile, Lucille is fine.

Right at the start of the video clip you can just make out the snapping turtle in the flowers at the front edge of the garden. She had dug a hole in PopPop's parsnips, but didn't lay any eggs there that we saw. By later in the afternoon she was on her way back out to the pond.

There is also a fleeting glimpse of the broadwing hawk that lives nearby.