Tonight Out in the Garden

Hola darlings! Tonight when I got home from the office it was really nice out. The sun was starting to set and my deck faces west, so I get that last blast of sun and warmth this time of year, which is really welcome after the horrid winter and cold cold spring we've had! So I unload my stuff - more about that later on - and pour myself a really BIG glass of cheap wine, grab a hand-full of in-the-shell-almonds for the squirrels, and head to the deck. I settle in and start reading the last quarter of an Amanda Quick novel. I just LOVE Amanda Quick. I toss out the almonds, whistle for my squirrels, who came running, and I settle down to read the rest of the novel. About 10 minutes later, I notice the Crazy Squirrel at the end of the yard. I don't even know if I can begin to describe Crazy Squirrel. I don't know if it is a he or a she. This is the second year that Crazy Squirrel has lived in or close to my yard. He or she is just - crazy. At first I thought Crazy Squirrel had the same disease that Mr. Tipsy Squirrel had. Sadly, since the last time I wrote about Mr. Tipsy Squirrel, I have not seen him, so I think he has died. But the last time I saw him, he was stuffing himself full of almonds and lots of other in-the-shell mixed nuts and he was happy. I could tell. Back to Crazy Squirrel. Crazy Squirrel hops and jerks and jumps and runs; Crazy Squirrel startles at nothing to cause alarm in the other squirrels, and runs a hundred miles a hour straight up a tree trunk, and then turns sommersaults like a Pong Ball in the upper limbs until he finally climbs back down and disappears to - I don't know where. Tonight Crazy Squirrel was bouncing around the yard as usual, and suddenly makes a bee-line for my 18-year old daffodil bunch. Actually, it started out as a house-warming gift 19 years ago from my sister-in-law Heidi. One day in fall, after I'd been here a couple of months (moved here in August, 1990, when construction was completed), Heidi came over to help me paint my upstairs bathroom (the same one I am now attempting, unsuccessfully thus far, to re-paint), and when we took a break she dashed out to her car and then dashed out the "grove" of then really small trees at the bottom of my backyard, and said she had a surprise for me. That day, Heidi planted at least 50 bulbs in that wasteland area that then constituted the grove. The next spring, only five things came up: a single daffodil, two tulips, and two grape hyacinth. The bunnies promptly attacked the tulips and hyacinth. They stopped appearing more than 10 years ago. But every spring since 1991, my first spring here, the daffodils have appeared without fail, each year the clump getting a little bit thicker. Seeing Crazy Squirrel ATTACK my clump of daffodils was totally shocking! He did it for at least five minutes. Flinging himself over and over into the midst of the clump and rubbing down into it! Running around and around underneath the outer-most edge of the greenery, and then casting himself once again into the middle of the clump. On his back, like a doggy rubs his back in the spring-time grass, that is what Crazy Squirrel was doing in my clump of daffodils! When he finished, my poor clump of daffodils was pretty much flattened to the ground. DAMN! But I didn't have the heart to get up and yell, stomping toward Crazy Squirrel, to chase him away. I mean, after all, he IS crazy! So, I drank my wine and finished the novel. When I had finished the novel, I came inside and uncovered my latest purchase and newest toy. A total extravagance that I should not have bought, but I bought it anyway. Well, darlings, it was on sale :) I've got myself one of those tiny netbooks to take to New York! The one I settled on is an Acer and I have totally fallen in love with it. It looks like the daughter of my much larger Toshiba laptop color-wise, a gold sparkle-filled blue (no idea what the color is called). After I unwrapped it I tried the keyboard out - it's small. Really small - the screen is only 8.9 inches wide! But I managed to type "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country" relatively rapidly and didn't make too many errors. I'm so happy. And I'm so bummed. I put a microwave dinner into my faithful old Carousel II that I purchased in 1986 and set it for the requisite number of minutes. When I went downstairs a few minutes ago to retrieve my supper from the microwave, I discovered, much to my horror, that it has died. Totally deadsville. I tried it in a number of different electrical outlets, just in case I blew a circuit breaker (although all of the lights are working just fine in the kitchen). Nothing. Well, it survived nearly 23 years. It would have been 23 in August, 2009. Alas, poor Carousel II, I knew thee well. Tomorrow morning I will reverently carry you out to the curbside and lay thee gently down, where I hope you will be retrieved by an enterprising junkman. You died just in time to miss this morning's garbage pick-up, so you must be destined for greater things than the City Dump. Now I have to buy a new microwave. In a BIG hurry! Mr. Don will be here in less than 2 days, expecting to be fed! EEK!