Take another little piece of my heart.

Dusty Springfield said it best. What tiny part of my heart that wasn't owned by a cute boy residing in my house or in Mark's is now in Oregon with Sasha.



We drove to Oregon on Saturday, hitting Powell's and Torrid in Portland for some tax free shopping before spending the rest of the day with aunt Marianne and uncle Gene at their place in Molalla (and watched Little Children, which is not a movie one would normally watch with ones father's sister. We have an unusual family). At Powell's, we found a used copy of the seminal macaw book with an author annotation and signature. I really do wonder who would sell a book that was a gift from a famous author with her signature and personal note inside. I think I'd carry it around with me and work it into conversation. We're good at doing that with bird topics. I'm sure none of you have noticed, we're so subtle. It's like a Jedi mind trick.

We drove to Eugene on Sunday, checked into our $50 Priceline hotel (woot!) and contacted the intake coordinator at the Eugene Exotic Bird Rescue, at whose house Sasha is living. Being whiny city folk, it seemed like we drove forever to get to her country house. Oh my God, why can't people live in the city?? We pulled into the drive and saw why they can't live in the city, namely the rows upon rows of donated cages waiting to be needed for surrendered birds. The sound was unmistakable, the cockatoo scream that you can hear three counties over coupled with the stream of Amazon chatter and giddy macaw chuckling. We could see one of the loudest perps through the window of the bird room as we walked up as he ran back and forth on his perch and shouted at us, like a white, fluffy guard dog. And she had those too, five of them, from the tiniest, squishiest little Chiahuaha EVER (squee) to an enormous, elderly shepherd who had the saddest face ever put on a mammal. And 22 birds. Say that with me. 22 birds, seven of which were the coordinator's own pets. She fosters some of the birds that are surrendered or rescued and socializes them to the best of human ability before they are adopted or given to rescue aviaries. 22 birds. And y'all think we're nuts.

The coordinator got Sasha out of her cage with a handheld perch as she, like many birds who have passed from hand to hand (most parrots will have an average of eight owners in their lifetime), is cage aggressive. However, once out of the cage, she was the sweetest, prettiest little muffin head I've ever seen. She was fairly tolerant of us on that first day, and we spent about two hours holding her and talking to her and bribing her with treats.



Mmmm...carrots, lucky girl.

The coordinator graciously offered to give us the class required to adopt when we returned the next day so we wouldn't have to drive down for it later in June. We had a take home test and an application to fill out together. We did quite well, I might add, and better than most, apparently. Thank God the hours of reading all the contradictory literature in aviculture has served some purpose, because my vet doesn't agree with most of it.

We returned to the coordinator's house the next morning after checking out and eating breakfast at the Original Pancake House (mmmm, coconut pancakes), next to a famous UofO athlete who had little boys clamoring for his autograph as we left and after a visit from the Oregon Duck and his girl, who are supposed to look like Donald and Daisy but actually looked like the Mexican knockoffs we saw on our Mazatlan shore excursion from the cruise.

Anyway, we returned, took the test and spent more time with Sasha, where I found that I am only a mere incidental compared to Christian. I'm quite jealous, actually. She showed such an obvious preference to his broad shoulders and manly scent that she would leap off my hand and onto his if he got within feet of me. Well, Cyril likes me better. Nyah.



After the test and visit, the coordinator told us that we were just the kind of people who should have Sasha in their home. We were thrilled, and only have the home inspection hurdle to overcome before we can get her and bring her home. As it turns out, one of the board members/home inspectors was in Seattle over the weekend and could have seen our home and allowed us to take Sasha with us when we left. Sigh. Regardless, the inspector from Olympia should be calling us soon to arrange a time to run over our house with a white cotton glove. Thank God we're mostly tidy. I can't bear to think of what would happen if they decided we just seemed too sketchy to have the little fluffy bunny head. However, I think we're keen. We can provide written testimonials.

One of several men with whom I share a shower.

I read a hilarious article a while back about the realities of bird ownership, and, until two weeks ago, thought that the answer to the question on bathing would forever describe how our birds felt about our attempts to get them wet. When we would try to approach any of them with the spray bottle or bring them to the shower, they would shiver in terror and fling themselves to the floor. Once we got them into the shower, they would clamp down their feathers so tightly that the water would merely bead up and roll off, like off of a freshly waxed car. But, as one of the most important things that a bird owner can do to help keep their birds' feathers in good condition is bathe them, we kept trying.

On a recent morning when Cyril seemed particularly dry and dusty, was losing a large number of feathers and was bristly with new ones, I thought I'd help ease his suffering a bit by drenching him to the nostrils. Apparently, molting is a pretty crappy, itchy process and the water helps to soothe the skin. I brought him into the bathroom with me on his portable stand and set him on the edge of the tub. Now, ever since I taught him to wave for a treat, he picks up his left foot and touches his beak whenever he sees something he wants. He also turns around in a circle, just like we taught him, thinking logically that a treat will follow, that smart chicken. So, I'm in the shower, and he's waving and spinning and leaning towards the water, which I'd never seen him do, so I picked up the perch and brought him close to the spray. He spread his wings, fluffed up all his feathers, opened his mouth and stuck his head underneath the showerhead. He delightedly shook and fluffed and flapped and squacked and drank and was so happy that, when I tried to move him so I could take a shower myself, he kept yelling and leeeeeeeaning and flying back to me and tangling himself in my hair. I must have held him in the spray for ten minutes. Of course, Christian was in Whistler for a work trip, so he missed the little show. I kept hoping that Cyril would want to shower again, but in the times that I had brought him to the bathroom since, he hadn't shown much interest, until yesterday. I always say good morning to the birds as soon as I get up, and I noticed that Cyril seemed twitchier than usual, so I got the perch and took him to the bathroom, hoping that he'd want to shower. As soon as I set him down on the tub, he started to lean and wave and turn. When I turned on the shower, he fluffed up and started to pace, so impatient. I picked him up on his perch, got in and stuck him under the showerhead. Thankfully, Christian was home this time and caught the bliss on film:

He refused to leave the shower until he was so wet that his tail feathers were dripping. You've never seen anything so scraggly as a wet parrot's ear hole. I then, of course, had to give him a little blow dry, which he also loves, and, like a dog, tries to eat the air as it's blowing in his face. I only use the low setting, of course. He was still slightly damp when I got home. I'm hoping that I can get him to run through the sprinklers this summer.

I know.

I know! Geez, I've been working on a painfully horrifying enormous grant that is due next week but will most likely kill me beforehand due to the stress of it and not being able to sleep because I dream about trainee tables taunting me because no one ever wants to give me their information and I have to beg and promise cookies and ask my bosses to go after people to find out from where Bob Smith recieved his bachelor's degree thirty years ago and I've had La Boheme which will seemingly never end either because this is the longest opera run in creation and I really hate this show anyway so it's just torture to hear the same shite over and over again five nights a week (at least the money is good) and we have birthday parties and baptisms this weekend and a cheese festival that I'm probably going to have to miss although that makes me cry because I love cheese more than life itself and we have to go to Eugene next weekend to meet Sasha and I'm taking the following week off to recover but I have a travel class I don't know if I should reschedule because they only happen every few months but I want to stay in Eugene to take Sasha to the vet to get her checked out (we can't have her if she'd make the poopers sick) and I haven't had the time/energy to vacuum and Mom and Dad are staying with us this weekend and oh shit, I forgot to change the bedsheets in the guest room and I haven't planted the tomatoes, pumpkins and cucumbers we bought last weekend and they're going to die and WHEN THE HELL will I get a chance to do that? Oh yeah, NEVER.

Project Object

I could spend the rest of my life just knitting for the boys.



With models this cute, I could make a killing selling baby knitwear. I love this little sweater. Love. It. I wanted to carry it around with me in my pocket and take it out occasionally when in a bad mood. Of course, the hat was too small for the giant head. I think I should start taking orders now.

A birdly update.

I've been emailing back and forth with the coordinator of the Eugene Exotic Bird Rescue about Sasha, the second mini-macaw they have at their rescue. She is tame, but somewhat cage territorial, as many birds are. That's an easy fix, though, with patience and persistence. Samantha, it seems, will need special care for the rest of her life as she has never been handled or trained. She would, unfortunately, be beyond our capabilities as bird owners. We have made plans to travel to Eugene over Memorial Day weekend to meet Sasha and be interviewed for taking her home. Adopting a rescued parrot is not for the timid or easily intimidated. We have to sit through a rigorous cross-examination, have a home inspection and attend a pet care/behavior class in Oregon before we can bring her home.

I'm always nervous when contemplating getting a new pet. I don't want to neglect Cyril or the little poopers, and I don't want to keep adding to the zoo to satisfy some inner need to be loved. I also don't want to be those people who don't have a square inch of home not occupied by an animal of some sort. I think that ship has sailed, however. The new cage for the little ones is, of course, massively humongously oversized, and removes any sense that we had decor in our house before we started decorating with feathers and poop. I simply cannot wait to remodel. We're going to build a sun room onto the back of the house, behind the kitchen, where the bird cages will go, surrounded by plants and chairs and near a dedicated sink. This plan is all that's keeping me going right now. I can't live in a pet shop forever, despite all evidence to the contrary. I just hope everyone will still want to come over. I'm getting a little embarrassed.

Over.

It's all over. The other driver in my birthday accident has signed a release of claim. It's done. No more threat of legal action. It's appropriately sunny out right now.

Let the betting commence.

Meet Samantha. She has gimpy feet. The parrotlets will be getting separate cages, which means the other half of the large cage will be free. One of you stands to make a tidy sum of money betting against how long it will take me to wear down Christian. I'd give it a month.

Sucking it up.

I really do hate auditioning. Every time I have an audition, I think of a million reasons why I should cancel, i.e., I don't know my music well enough, they won't ever cast me, I'm too chubby for any role, I'll get nervous and forget my words, blah blah blah. A few days before auditions, I get so nervous that I have trouble sleeping and am a wretched cow to Christian. I get convinced that I don't know what I'm doing and that the auditors are going to roll their eyes and tap their pens and say "thank you!" pointedly in the middle of my first phrase. Then, I show up at the audition (well, today's audition) and the auditors are SO NICE and friendly and amazingly cool and chatty and hilarious that I'm not nervous and I actually sing OK, and it doesn't matter if I don't get cast because I feel good about how I did. Mostly. If I don't think too much about how I sang. Shit. How did I sing?

A fox in every fable.

A few years ago, we went to Flatstock at Bumbershoot, where I fell in love with the prints of Eleanor Grosch, a rock poster artist who was not only adorable but incredibly talented. She has done many series of posters of varying artisty subjects, but her posters of Aesop's fables had me drooling. There were only two in the series of four left by the time I got to her booth, so I bought "The Tortoise and the Hare" and "The Fox and the Crane". Christian recently bought the 2006 Print Annual, and lo and behold, there were two of the prints, which I can now say are award winning when people ask about them. I couldn't remember Eleanor's name, and so I never got to see the series until now. I cannot stand that "The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing" and "The Fox and the Crow" are sold out and I cannot add them to my sad little art collection. It took me two years to get the prints I do own framed, but now that they are and they look so gorgeous, I want all of them. All. And she has prints of birds. Be afraid, Chris. Be afraid.

Not so crumbly, anymore.

My hair is blonde, my house is clean, we booked our December trip to Disney World (and the Travel Channel is having a Disney World program marathon tomorrow), I bought pretty fabric to make my first dress, I finished my first solo grant budget and Shelly brought me a cookie. Improvment is noted.

My world, she is crumbling.

The Steel Pig on 89th and Aurora is closing. I dyed my hair a catastrophic color. The weather continues cold and soul-crushing. Christian gets to go bowling during work while I try to figure out why my NEA never got processed and why I'm being told only five days in advance that a budget is closing. The sweater I've been knitting Christian for six months is coming out too small. I have no solo gigs lined up for the indeterminate future. I need a cookie.

Chicken on the Brain

We took Cyril for his teeny tiny head x-ray last Saturday. We were told to leave before the procedure and go to breakfast and they would call us when it was over. I think they didn't want me standing in the waiting room wringing my hands, muttering and asking if that horrible shriek I just heard was my sweet baby without whom I'd be nothing and could I please go into the back and hold him while they did the x-ray? I'd wear a lead vest and hold him very still. No? Fine.

We did go to breakfast, but came back before they called as I couldn't stand it any longer. They had to file his beak after the x-ray and, before we left to eat, had luridly described the procedure as if it had been devised in the mind of Pinochet (they made it out to involve a vice and an industrial metal file) just to set me at ease. I love being mocked by medical professionals. It makes me place such confidence in their skills. Anyway, he came through the anesthetic for the x-ray fine, but they had to resedate him during the filing (with no vice, thankfully) as he was too worked up to be held still (the office manager, David-with-the-lovely-accent, told me later that he went to the back to comfort Cyril because he was hollering so much), and they had to remove quite a bit of beak to correct his bite problem. I have never seen an animal look so betrayed and confused as when they brought him back out after it was all done. His slightly drugged expression made him look exactly like the big-eyed children in 60's velvet art. His beak looked beautiful, all even and pretty, but the vet told us that it looked as though he had a problem with the joint that made his jaw too loose, which would explain the overgrowth and his constant yawning and scratching of his jaw. The radiologist who read the x-ray would later confirm that the filing could correct the problem and it wouldn't become permanent, which was a relief.

We found out on the trip to the vet the first time that Cyril gets carsick in the back seat (the similarities between him and me are now getting slightly disturbing), so he rode on Christian's shoulder on the drive home, swaying slightly but letting us scratch him in what I assume was a comforting way. He recovered completely, though, with the unexpected bonus (in his mind) of now having a much sharper beak with which he can chew through his hateful flight suit. Pictures of that hilarity will be forthcoming.

My boobs, stage left.

A fellow singer posted on the Forum that a photo from the Tacoma Opera production of Beatrice et Benedict in which I played Ursula is on the homepage of Opera America, the industry's main organization. That is my gleaming white chest next to the head of the ingenue. Hey, I'll take fame any way I can get it.

Why do the Ides have to be in March?

Would the Ides of June just not sound as threatening?

Lest you think we are neglecting the birds...

I give you chicken helper:

He's very useful to have around the house. He's a far more effective paper shredder than, well, the paper shredder. And this is his reward:

Well, my reward, anyway. He's not overly fond of the snorgle.

We recently made a purchase that we're hoping will contribute to Cyril's portability and cleanliness:

Yes, that little hole goes over the waste disposal unit, and the discs of cotton are, well, diapers. Do you want to see a tutorial of how to use this suit? Go here. Prepare to laugh hysterically thinking about how it will not be remotely that easy to get that thing on Cyril.

Oh, and by the way, he has to have a head x-ray on Saturday. Yes, a head x-ray. A little, tiny head x-ray. Apparently, the crooked beak could be a bone abnormality. Say it with me. A bird. head. x. ray. Imagine the little lead vest.

It's a special gift.

Not everyone could lock themselves IN their car, necessitating crawling over the emergency brake into the passenger seat while in a dress and heels to be able to get out.

Why, oh why did I get out of bed this morning?

Nope, not possible.

It's simply not possible for a child to be this adorable.



Three for three, I'd say.

February Lows

I've been feeling very low as of late, with the unresolved accident and the dismal weather, so I haven't been able to muster much energy to post a brilliant and ripping description of my England trip, but I was recently given two bits of post-worthy hilarity to keep me going:

1. Every time Sandra Lee flashes her cleavage, the portal separating our world and Hell cracks open a little wider. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks so.

2. We banned the Electric Slide from our wedding reception. I'm glad, as it could have engendered a lawsuit if we posted the video online.

Ah, American culture. You never fail to give me succor in times of woe.

I'll give you irony, Alanis.

I just found an amazing and apparently quite fabulous retailer of women's boots that lists and carries sizes by foot and calf size. Good God. It's like my these designers have been shopping with me and wanted to ease my pain. I wish I had known about it before I went to England as their original shop is in BATH. I was eating buns when I could have been buying boots. There is no justice.

Why I hate professional sports.

There will be more about England when I have time to post with pictures. However, I learned a very valuable lesson on my flights home yesterday. When flying with a stopover, don't ever fly through a city whose football team is playing in the superbowl, especially if you have to collect your baggage, clear customs and reenter the airport through baggage check, take the train to another terminal and THEN pass through security, because no one will be there to perform any of the jobs that make the above mentioned things possible.

Apparently, all vital staff either called in sick to work or would only do their proscribed duties between plays or during commercials. Only four immigration officers were working, though a weekend, our bags were unloaded only a few at a time and over an hour was spent waiting at the carousel while passengers escalated in anger and frustration, as most of us had short windows of time in which to catch our connecting flights, only six people were working the bag re-check once through customs, only one horrible woman was working information and no one was directing passengers to their proper terminals once through customs, as the terminal we flew in to was only international flights and all other domestic flights were in one of three other terminals accessible only by train. With only moments to spare, I made it to my flight, only to wait for an hour on the plane as bags were being loaded by most likely only one person, who must have used merely one arm as the other one was, to all probability, occupied by vigorous fist-pumping and high fiving. Then, the airport was apparently unable to find anyone to push the plane back from the gate to allow us to get underway. We made it to Seattle a half hour late, exhausted, dirty and frustrated.

I will now become precisely that type of person with whom I could never sympathisize: one who purchases a direct ticket despite the savings of many dollars on a flight with a stop over.