Mother Nature, the Heartless Wench

See these eggs?


They appeared in an adorable little nest on my mother's backyard deck, in a flower planter, right around my birthday last March. While we were there on vacation, we got to watch Mommy and Daddy Finch fly back and forth, adding more fluff and twigs to keep the eggs warm. In the evenings whenever we saw Mom Finch return to her eggs, we would grab our drinks and vacate our comfy seats on the deck, abandoning the beautiful sunset, in order to assure our feathered friends their privacy.

The baby finchlets (finchlings? finchy-babies?) were born sometime early this week, sending their parents on a constant cycle of food retrieval. My mom emailed me about their birth, and excitedly added a few words about God's blessings.

Now let me just go ahead and destroy this so-far cute blog entry by saying that I understand that animals eat other animals -- myself included. But it just seems wrong that in such a picture of miracles and blessings, a pair of raccoons should be allowed -- philosophically speaking -- to just wander in and turn beauty into gore? I mean, what is the lesson here?

I used to think raccoons were cute. Next time I see one, I'm gonna kick it.

catch up

I guess I'll write a new blog while I'm downloading Sopranos episodes. I only started watching the show for something to pack my Pod with (same reason I got temporarily hooked on Desperate Housewives, which totally jumped the shark in the second season), but watching even a single episode keeps me doing... dis tick, joisy accent fah hours aftahwads, youknowwhatahmsayin?

So much has happened in the past month. For the second time, a grandparent died during our vacation. I hope it's simply a sad coincidence and not a curse, as we're going to Disney in a couple of weeks and we're running low on relatives.

My 4-year old daughter fell off of a barstool (at the breakfast counter) a couple of days ago (we were so freaked out that we didn't even get the joke the doctor made about her being too young to go to a bar -- ho ho ho, Dr. Funnypants. Now fix our baby!). We were at the ER until after midnight getting her a CAT scan. Thankfully she slept thru it and more thankfully she's fine -- just a concussion. She's back to talking a mile a minute and being the beautiful princess with silly hats and breath that smells suspiciously of Smarties.

Other than that, I'm a year older and now sport blonde, chin-length hair. If this French-Women-Don't-Get-Fat diet -- I mean, lifestyle change -- kicks in, I should be thin enough to actually wear this cute haircut out in public. Until then, I'll sip my leek soup in my sweats on the comfy couch watching Tony Soprano on my iPod. But I'd raddah be eatin freakin ziti, capice??