Lowe’s sells a suction-cup bird feeder hanger.  But all its bird feeders are too heavy to hang on it.
Home Depot sells quite a few lighter-weight hummingbird feeders to put on the suction-cup bird feeder hanger that Lowe’s sells.

But it doesn’t sell ant baffles for the hummingbird feeders.
Lowe’s sells ant baffles.  But it does not sell squirrel baffles for regular bird feeders.

Home Depot sells squirrel baffles (but not ant baffles).
But it does not sell bird-feeder-mounting poles on which to use squirrel baffles.

But Lowe’s does.  It has a pole that you can put four lightweight bird feeders on.  It doesn’t, however, sell lightweight bird feeders to hang on it.  It only sells heavy bird feeders.

Neither of them sell squirrel-repellent cayenne powder for birdseed.

The local nursery does.  But they have a ten-dollar minimum, and the squirrel-repellent cayenne powder is only three dollars.

Somebody remind me why I’m taking money out of my grocery budget to give food away free to wild animals.

Amos Martin
6 months old
28 inches
15 pounds 2 ounces
100% cute

“‘This train doesn’t carry passengers.  But the crew can enjoy the view!’”
“Theo, do you know what a crew is?”
“It’s people that the people take with them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like NCIS.  When they go on the ship.  There’s a crew.”
“Oh.  And what does a crew do?”
“They murder people, Mom.”
“Aha.  Yes.  Carry on.”

So, apparently, plants don’t like it when you leave for three weeks and don’t water them.  During a heat wave.  Or even, like, normal summer.

I think the pineapple sage might bounce back, but most of the rest of them are goners.

The kale might have survived had it not been attacked by cabbage loopers.  :snarly face:

The tomatoes actually might do okay, too.  Maybe they had a bigger reservoir?  And the peppers and green beans had open pots, so that when it rained, they got watered.  (That’s the one down side to EarthBoxes.  You have to water them, even after a good rain.)  So they may survive, too.

Dear Newsboys:

I understand that “It’s the love between you and I” is supposed to rhyme with “When we laugh so hard we cry.”

Unfortunately, it’s just wrong.

It should be “the love between you and me.”  “Me” is the object of the preposition “between.”  It should be in the objective case, as it is in “Correct grammar gushed out of me,” or “My education was a metaphorical support beneath me.”  I mean, think of it: you wouldn’t say “between we,” would you?

(Would you??)

No, you would say, “Our common passion for the English language pulsed between us.”

So, may I make a suggestion?  In order to have both your rhyme and your grammatical street cred, you should make it:

“When we laugh so hard we pee,
It’s the love between you and me!
Something beautiful!”

See?  Grammar is a wonderful thing.

When we were visiting my parents a couple weeks ago, Pop-pop took us to an outdoor furniture mecca.

He just had to get a replacement umbrella.  We were window shopping new outdoor sets.

There were some things there that were clearly not designed for . . . us.

The kids were getting a little antsy, until I assigned them the task of trying out every chair in the place to find the most comfortable one.  (Theo was especially assiduous in the performance of his duties.)

They finally agreed on this as their preferred set:

Pretty, isn’t it?  Wicker.

On sale, too.

This was my favorite set.  Responsibly harvested Brazilian hardwoods, some tree I’ve never heard of, that never, ever, EVER rots or splits in shade or sun.  This table would seat eight, and can have either chairs or benches.  (I particularly liked the benches.  Two adult fannies or three kid fannies.)

This was much less than the wicker set–only about $3500, not counting the umbrella.  Very reasonable.

Pop-pop and Isaac agreed that Happy Hour would be best on this set:

It had a picnic table to go with:

Very cheery.  I think we could have gotten this one in for under $3000, if we were willing to get only one umbrella for the picnic table and the bar table to share.  (Isaac promised to be our Designated Mover–you know, drink non-alcoholic beverages during Happy Hour so that someone would be able to move the umbrella safely over.)

If you had ultra-deep pockets, what would your outdoor furniture of choice be?

Okay, it seems I owe someone an apology.

I publicly, directly, and vociferously told my friend she was crazy.  I didn’t say stupid, but I did imply a certain level of abnormality.

She eats greens for breakfast.  Kale, chard, spinach, whatever.  She does.  And I told her how nutsoid that was.  I tried to back-pedal a bit, to soften a bit, after the initial expression of disapproval had left my mouth.  “Well, I like greens and all, but I can’t imagine ever having them before lunchtime.”

I do try to make cooked greens every once and a while for dinner.  But lately I’ve been trying to make them more often–once or twice a week, even.  As you can imagine, this leaves me with lots of leftover greens.  Kale, chard, broccoli raab, whatever.  The creamed spinach tends to get polished off, but the rest of them tend not to get themselves voraciously eaten.  I often have them for lunch the next day.  (I really do like greens.)

Well, one morning about two months ago, we were out of fruit.  I don’t like to have a meal without a fruit or vegetable, so I decided to have, instead of my usual yogurt and fresh fruit, a poached egg over toast.  And since I had all this leftover chard, I decided to make it a poached egg over chard over toast.

It was delicious.

I did this several times over the next few weeks–toast and egg with the previous night’s leftover greens.

And then, this morning, the unthinkable.

I made greens fresh this morning.  Just so that I could have greens for breakfast.

Elizabeth, I hereby apologize publicly for questioning your sanity.  And I admit that you were completely and totally right.

Feel free to smile smugly in my direction.

I have a project that went missing a while ago.

In fact, it went missing exactly a year ago.  Do you know how I know?

Because I found it three weeks ago.  I found it in a bag that I brought home from last Annual Conference.  I found it on my way to Annual Conference this year.

I didn’t finish it during Annual Conference, although that would have been delightfully apropos.

And I didn’t lose it again.  It’s right here, next to me.  I am going to try to finish it before I lose it again.

I’ve been traveling for two weeks.  That’s why I haven’t been here.  Because I haven’t been here.  (And that’s not the kind of thing I tell all . . . what, four? people that read my blog.)

Pics and things may come at some point, but for now I’ll just report that I visited eight different Chick-Fil-As this trip, and I am still flabbergasted by how pleasant, courteous, and conscientious their staff were.  Across the board, in five different states, people were falling all over themselves to do an excellent job.

There were even flowers in the restroom at one place.  Flowers.  In the restroom.

Weird.

It’s like they think working in a fast-food restaurant doesn’t equate to being a low-life degenerate with nothing to look forward to.

I wonder how CFA accomplishes that.

Couch to 5K Running Program, Week 3.

Alternate periods of workout and recovery.

Walk On, U2 (5 minute warm-up walk)

Desire, U2 (1.5 minute jog, 1.5 minute walk)

Go (I Wanna Send You), Newsboys (3 minute jog)

Valse d’Amour, Paris Combo (3 minute walk)

Get On, Third Day (1.5 minute jog, 1.5 minute walk)

Night, Bruce Springsteen (3 minute jog)

These Thousand Hills, Third Day (3 minute walk)

Christ Is Risen, Matt Maher (5 minutes light gardening or otherwise enjoying nature)

The primary selection criterion for this soundtrack is that the song changes coincide with the planned alternation of hard exercise and recovery exercise.  The author blithely combines secular and Christian music, but only because Mozart just didn’t write any good jogging tunes.

The publication of this soundtrack in no way obligates the author to assume responsibility for your exercise or music-listening practices.  Please use reasonable caution when exercising to music.  Do not use headphones that block out ambient sound–like approaching cars, out-of-control riding lawnmowers, or vicious attack kittens–nor turn the sound up to irresponsible levels.  Do not exercise without first consulting with your physician, your spiritual advisor, and a select group of girlfriends who will honestly tell you how you look in spandex.  This round of exercise will burn as many calories as are in two chocolate chips (not two chocolate chip cookies!), so don’t eat two pints of B&J and blame the author.