funny text convo

Recent text conversation between my 13-yr old nephew and I:

nephew: It sucks when you have to get up in the morning... your bed all warm, ur pillows r so comfy..your blankets happen to slide over you. zzzz

me: yes! Sooo snuggly & warm. And the house all frigid. <-- hhate!

him: Lol but then there's that nagging voice in your head that kicks in after you already fell asleep for about a half hour.

me: ...um, yeah, that's called "MOM"...!

injured bird - what to do

(In lieu of TMI Thursday, today's post is dedicated to the topic of bird rescue and contains info condensed from several older posts.)
Because it's springtime and birds are gearing up for nesting, they're less cautious then usual and will sometimes fly into traffic in a mating chase. Please be especially watchful when driving. If you do find an injured bird, don't handle it directly with your hands but use paper towels or some other barrier. (Not what I'm doing here with my bare hands... do as I say, not as I do! lol. I did once handle a bird that was full of mites, that's why it's a good idea to protect yourself.)

Ovenbird

"For some reason, this little bird couldn't fly. I grabbed it and rushed it to a wildlife rehabber. Here it is, cupped gently in my hands. Poor thing was terrified. Best thing to do for injured birds is to keep them covered so it can't see (if holding it, cover the face or else drape a cloth over its container), otherwise stress worsens their condition. The rehabber told us we could hold a q-tip near the bird's beak and let some drops of water fall so the bird could take them if it wanted. She also said traditional wisdom for wildlife rehab is not to do anything for the first 24 hours because animals are in shock and need time to calm down."

Links to wildlife rehabilitators:

U.S wildlife rehabilitators
(searchable by state)

Maryland wildlife rehabilitators:

Maryland Department of Natural Resources
1-877-463-6497 or 410-260-8940
*24 hour line that provides names and numbers of licensed wildlife rehabilitators

Maryland Wildlife Rehabilitators Association
(Directory of people who are certified in animal rescue -- sometimes you can bring an animal or bird directly to someone's house instead of a facility.)
410-255-4737

Davidsonville Wildlife Sanctuary
Davidsonville, MD
410-798-0193

Second Chance Wildlife Center
Gaithersburg, MD
301-926-WILD

In some counties, you can call Animal Control and they will pick up the injured animal and transport it to a rehabber for you. (I did this last year with another bird -- Prince George's County Animal Control sent out a van to get the bird and bring it to a certified wildlife animal rehabilitation facility.)

It is polite to offer a donation to help with the burden of expenses.
Sometimes the injuries are too great and there is no hope for rescue. I've swerved off the road more than once after seeing a hit to find the poor bird already gone. In those cases, it made me feel better to donate a small sum to a bird-centric organization in the hope that honoring a small creature's life will help another:

• American Bird Conservancy
• Cornell Lab of Ornithology
  
• National Audubon Society
• The Songbird Foundation

It is a myth that touching a baby bird will cause its mother to reject it. If you see a nestling, search for a nearby nest and place it back if you can. More advice on rescuing nestlings -->.

Update. And thank you.

Sigh. Maybe I should call this blog "Spleeness's catalogue of loss."

But I haven't lost her yet.

I've been visiting a friend in the hospital the past few of days; someone on the tail end of a brutal fight with cancer that is expected to end soon. It's gutting. I have so much I want to write about but I'm not sure how right now. She's not dead yet. And recording it now somehow feels like I'd be writing a eulogy and I just can't. Right now I am trying to celebrate her life, spend what little time there is left together. Later I will deal with the loss. Not now.

I wanted to thank you for coming to my blog and reading my words. My last post was heavy. But I've been thinking. If loss is what makes us old, then what makes us young must be a sense of community. And I get that from you. In ways you may not even fully realize, you have been here for me.

Thank you.

Visiting Allison.

I began writing this post in a dream.

I was 1,000 miles from home and visiting a college bookstore when I suddenly ran into my childhood friend, Allison, my best friend from about ages 6-12 before I moved away. I was somehow traveling backwards through time. I didn't ask how -- dreams are funny like that. I just knew it was happening.

She was young and beautiful in my dream, a sophomore in college. She was with her boyfriend who I knew would soon become her husband.

I watched her peruse through merchandise and pick up party lights."Ah," I thought. "You were not yet dead." She didn't know that two years from then she'd be gone, a victim of childbirth gone terribly wrong.

I went over and talked to her in my dream, wanting so badly to hold onto our conversation, the connection. Outwardly it seemed light, airy. We laughed together. I winced inside. She couldn't possibly know or understand that her foreshadowed death rattled around in my innards like a broken bottle, that I needed to double over and wrap my arms around myself to hold in the pieces that were coming apart.

One of the tiny lightbulbs dropped on the floor and bounced but did not break. I bent over to pick it up and thought, "Is this what it's like when you travel back in time to spend an instance with someone?" I thought. "Consumed only with when you would lose them, unable to fully enjoy the moment?"

I wanted to cry great racking sobs for the future as I knew how it would play out. I felt gyped. I went back to see her -- worked so hard for this moment -- and yet even then could not bring back the innocence that existed before I knew the pain of her loss.

We continued our light banter. I swallowed more glass. I found her a sweater she could wear on her way home. There was some comfort in giving her that, on that last occasion that I would see her. And we parted. She bought her party supplies. I watched her fade and slowly became conscious that I was dreaming. That's when I began writing this post in my head.

I woke up thinking of her and of all the other losses in my life I would know one day. How I'd be forever changed by each one, bent and gnarled like a charred, twisted oak, scarred by countless storms and fires.

Maybe this is the thing that makes us old. Loss. Because it robs us of our innocence that the world will stay as we know it.

So THAT'S where all the food went.

So, I found this page of roommate confessions and it brought me back to my college years. I thought I had awesome roommates until I discovered one of them was stealing mail, food, clothing and destroying personal property. (The other one was, actually, still awesome.)

The site is hilarious. Sample roommate confession:

• You stuck a fork in my blender. You bought my boyfriend a duck and 53 goldfish. You took exactly 204 naked pictures of yourself with my camera. You almost killed my hedgehog. You bought us a hamster then lost it. You steal my clothes. You made a tireswing in our apartment (which was actually f*cking amazing but still) and you completely covered a wall in packing peanuts and then told me it was installation art, and you have recently decided you're a Mormon Scientologist. So I feel totally fine just redecorating your room to make you believe you were in hell when you pass out. And then locking you in there for 48 hours. It's not my fault you're retarded. --Emma Sprague, School Not Given

• Imagine Jabba the Hut and Princess Leia had some bastard emo child. That's my roommate. All she does is sit on her bed and eat, then gets up and stinks up the toilet. And then complains, complains, complains! She hasn't once brushed her teeth, rarely showers, and photoshops pictures of herself on websites so she can text random boys from the internet to get them to send pictures of their penises to her. Since she is always sleeping (at least 23h a day, and the rest of the time she is doing above) I have to do my work in the dark and she bitches out on me for waking her up sometimes. So for the past 2 months I've intentionally been having sex with my boyfriend early every Thursday morning, so she can lie there listening too us and are sex noises. It's worth it even if she bitches me out about it later. --Rachel McCallum, School Not Given

For today's TMI Thursday, I'll light upon one (just one!) of those roommate incidents.

I'd arrived home one afternoon ready to make a cake for a friend's birthday. I reached into the fridge to get out the icing and I realized someone had attacked it. It looked as if a mountain lion chewed off the top, dipped 4 thick toes into the center and scooped out a giant glob. "Huh," I thought, irritated. "I can't use this but fine, I can make the cake tomorrow. I'll just leave a note for whoever ate this to replace it."

I wrote:

"Whoever ate the icing in the fridge, can you please replace it? I have to make a birthday cake tomorrow. Thanks!"

Then I didn't think about it for the rest of the day.

The next morning I woke up, stretched and ambled slowly out to the kitchen and I saw about 16 sticky notes tacked together on the dining room table in a lengthy reply to my note. I picked it up and recognized at once the hard, angry handwriting of the frustrated.

The reply started, "I didn't eat your icing!! It must have been the same person who ate my..." and then commenced an enormous list of food items, some of which I'd never even heard of, let alone realized were in the house. Only one response too, from the nice roommate. Evil roommie ignored it on her way to NJ for the weekend.

I kept reading, first in shock at the sheer volume. And then I started to laugh. I was still laughing when I knocked on Nice Roommie's door.

"L? Um, I just saw your note. I didn't even realize you HAD half this stuff. I mean, I had nothing in the freezer so I just never went in there. I didn't know you had an entire box of Reese's peanut butter cups inside. The whole box disappeared? DAYum. And this other stuff?" I pointed. "I just really had no idea."

I couldn't stop laughing though. My roommie looked at me and her frown turned up a bit. "D is allergic to peanut butter so I thought it was you."

Me: "um, no, no way would I eat someone's food like that. I mean, if I HAD, like if I was in the grip of some wholly unstable mentally ill state, I would have at least told you and then immediately replaced it. So, huh. WTF?"

She started to laugh; THAT'S where all the food was going all this time. Both of us suddenly understood eachother. We spent the rest of the afternoon sharing stories (like the time all the steak chunks in a meat & rice dish of mine went missing, and how the entire outer ring of a coffee cake bore teethmarks).

Then we went out and split a box of Reese's in solidarity.

Next time I'll discuss the stolen property, mail and missing cordless phone story. For now? You can get more TMI Thursdays:
More TMI Thursday?

• LiLu's TMI Thursday Hub -->
• My TMI Thursday archive -->

Wear a spider on my chest? Really?

I cannot believe I am voluntarily electing to wear a spider on my chest.

I just bought this:

The spiders? They're real. I know because I met the photographer and he told me all about how he took the photo in Cambodia.

Cambodian spiders?

They're WICKED.

Photographer Jack Whitsitt writes:

"At one of the temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, I turned around and found this beast hanging right in front of me. It was huge. Usually, when faced with spiders of this size, I just scream like a little girl. This time, though, the legs just creeped me out so badly I just moaned. Neither my wife nor my friends were near by at the time...ugh. But then the photographer in me took over and I got the shot. Finally, I put it on a tshirt because I figure, if confronting the things that scare him makes Batman stronger, maybe I should try it too. ;)"

(Oh and the original photo is here on Flickr.)

Get your own spider tee --> http://bit.ly/spidertee (just don't wear it around me, k? I can *wear* it because I won't be able to *see* it but if you have it on, we can't hug or anything. Understood?)

Terrible analogy WIN

So I was posting some of the most terrible analogies I'd ever seen on Twitter and came across this one which was too long to tweet:

"Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:flw.quid55328.com\aaakk/ch@ung but gets T:\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by mistake."

-- Ken Krattenmaker, Landover Hills, one of the winners in the Washington Post Style Invitational's "Worst Analogies Ever Written in a High School Essay" contest, 1996.

Haha! Anyone know what in the *world* this is referring to?? Absolutely cracks me up though.

TMI Thursday: NO frontal nudity! I promise.

All names have been changed for this TMI Thursday. Any names you see here have been made up. But the story is real.

Jumping in...

So, I do web design for a living: officially by day but I also freelance at night.

One day I get a call from a very nervous-sounding gentleman.

Dude: "Hi. Um, I'm calling because I need a website designed. Will you do it for me?"

me: "Tell me a little about what you need." (my standard response).

him: "Um. Well. I just called like 10 other designers but no one else will do it. They just won't. They hear what I do and they hang up. But it's not like I'm doing anything bad or wrong, it's just um, an unusual business."

me (thinking hmmm, he must have seen the disclaimer on my website about how I will not consider any job whose ends or means are unethical; and yes, it's there because I have been asked): "Well, what type of business is it?"

him: (sighing loudly) "Um. It's a male entertainment company. But just until I get back on my feet! I'm only doing this right now while I'm out of school."

me (flicking imaginary cigarette in boredom; like I care why he chose any given profession): "Well, I don't do websites that aim to swindle money out of people but tell me more about what kind of site you need and I'll see if I can help."

him: "Well, I'm a male dancer. And I want to set up a simple website with just a few pages that tells people about my service and has pictures of the dancers. But don't worry! They will all be wearing clothes. At least bottoms! No nudity. Well maybe the rear will be exposed but that's it. No frontal nudity! I promise."

me (now amused): "Well, I require 1/3 down to start, 1/3 at the halfway point and then 1/3 when the job is complete."

him: "YES! That sounds AWESOME. Sign me up."

me: "Ok, let me get some information from you then." I pull out a notebook to begin my client checklist. "What's your name?"

(note: names changed! But this is very close to the, um, essence, of how the conversation ensued.)

him: "Richard Hard."

me (not noticing odd name): "Ok, what's your address?"

I jot down all his information. Yeah, his name may have been unusual but whatever. I didn't really even think about it -- the world is full of the oddly-named; like "Gay Horny" (an actual person but you'll never find them because countless porn references drown out relevant results) and "Gaston Feeblebunny". So I barely register this and continue moving through my list. One last question before I'm done.

me: "Ok, and lastly, what's your email address?"

him (coughing): "Um. Ahem." (voice lowered, hand cupped over mouth) "DonSmith@universityofspleen.edu**" (**not a real address).

I started laughing. "Alright, RICHARD. When would you like to meet, RICHARD?"

I still don't know what the dude's real name is. He paid me in cash and money orders so there was no real record of his name. But I built him a site. It's still out there, even though I dropped him as a client years ago when he started to seem shady.

So this is me during the design stage; pulling images into photoshop to design a template.

This WAS a fun project.... though I like working on science & educational sites much better, they don't make for quite as interesting of a TMI Thursday post...!

Want more? Fill your TMI Thursday cup:

• Lilu's TMI Thursday hub -->
• And my own TMI Thursday archive -->

wordless Wednesday

Well, mostly wordless. This was taken just before I started banging my head against the wall. Captions? Hint: just got off the phone with Verizon.

funny twitter updates, volume 1

Today I bring you a collection of some of my favorite Twitter updates. I started compiling this list a while ago. (Have any to suggest? Email me: spleeness@yahoo.com )

I have vomit on my pants, and it's not mine. @ganson

Opened my fireplace damper last night. First time this year. Two tiny dead birds fell out. Like a slot machine where the prize is 500 tears. @wailinglist

Fellow patient in waitng rm has 10 inch nails, painted blood red. Her hands hover over purse as nails search for insurance card @kellygo

It's pretty clear that even if a horse was in my nose I couldn't pick it. @jeffLandou

Overheard in the Newsroom #2949: Deskmate on our 13-year-old computers: “Hey, I could throw this thing a Bar Mitzvah!” @h1661n5

Had the "basic training" dream again, the twist this time was it was
on post-terraformed Mars. Even in my *dreams* I'm a huge nerd. @h1661n5

Should write a book for the Twitter age entitled "No One Cares What You Ate Thirty-Seven Seconds Ago." @maggie

I wouldn't say I'm "married" to my work, but we're definitely f-ing the s*** out of each other. @jordanrubin

And the crowd goes mild. @leemathews

If anyone needs me, I'll be doing lines of vitamin D off the toilet seat. @JayFerris

Then there are a whole slew of updates from @matthewbaldwin who I do not know personally but was one of my first subscribed feeds:

In the office restroom, peeing alongside three colleagues. Thought of something funny and loudly guffawed while staring at own penis.

Hands of woman next to me on freeway fidgeting wildly on steering wheel. Wondered if she was on meth before I realized she was knitting.

Guy on the treadmill next to me looked like he was falling down a flight of stairs for 20 minutes straight.

How my cat manages to vomit every ounce of food he ingests onto my carpet and yet remain obese is the greatest mystery of our time.

Today I went to both the dentist and the auto shop. Mouth cost 6x more to fix and doesn't even have air conditioning.

Car won't start. Fortunately it's the starter and not the battery, so you can still listen to the radio while sitting there sobbing.

Guy in front of me at the salad bar is assembling his lunch with the ease and speed of a man struggling through an LSAT exam.

Scott McClellan's new book, summarized: "I totally didn't know I was lying those 630,000 times."

Yes! Managed to work the word "flaccid" into every work email I sent today!

Trying to keep this meeting on point is like trying to catch a feral opossum with a plastic grocery bag

Went running for the first time in--jeeze, like 6 months? Long story short: unpleasantness ensued."

Skipped lunch. Now hungry. Could be some connection; remember to
investigate later.

F YOU MIDDLE-AGE PAUNCH, I'M DRINKIN THIS SECOND CAN OF COKE!

A sampling of mine (when I'm not obsessing over the moon, like earlier): (@spleeness)

Looking at photo, me and x simultaneously shriek "she looks like Nathan Lane!" which I suppose is not really a compliment.

Wait. Dogs don't have a cud, what is he chewing on after burping so much? Nevermind. I don't want to know.

My life has just changed forever. There is a "Society for the Protection & Preservation of the Fruitcake"??

Found THIS scribbled on bedside table, after a dream last night: "I can't believe they're going to try paying for that with ectoplasm." huh?




Now, this was volume 1, view the
Funny Twitter updates (ARCHIVE) -->