Owl Box

Bumped into this streaming video of an owl box containing four nearly adult chicks. I wish I had time to just sit here and watch it. After finishing Wesley The Owl I am more in love with owls than I was before. The box belongs to a family in California, who put the box up two years ago but didn't have residents till this year. The owls are totally unaware of the camera. Right now they are just sleeping so all I can see is the feathers of two of them moving with their breathing, but it's like meditation. Beautiful.

The Next Josh Groban

Three people have sent me this video to post. He is a British youngster of Irish and Scottish descent named Declan Galbraith with a lot of musical talent. This video shows him at age 12 singing his own composition. The auditory quality of the first video leaves a lot to be desired but you need this version to understand the lyrics of the chorus at the end, the message of which is dear to my heart. Below it is a copy that sounds better but without the lyrics.

Version with lyrics:


Better musical quality, no lyrics provided:

Sorry For The Delay -- Here Are The Videos

Don't you love the sideways viewpoint? He clearly speaks in sentences now as long as you don't care what order the words are in.


Cyrus heard Saeed cough in the computer room and took off running. I played this video for Cyrus and we both laughed at the sound his feet made smacking the kitchen floor. He made me replay it several times.


I took this video because Cyrus was loudly and accurately counting the balls as he dropped the balls into the basket. The moment he sees me with the camera he becomes mute. Well, he does whisper the numbers.


Cyrus made use of the rugs rolled up on the living room floor (due to the guys painting our house.) It amazes me how little kids can do the same thing over and over and over and over...


Apparently sound effects are very funny!


This visit he was much more interested in cramming the crayons into the box than coloring. Whatever floats your boat bubsy.


Cyrus loves his own things - his very own bed, pillow, blanket, Mickey Mouse, and baby. The "wind" you hear in this video is the fan above my head.


This series of videos show Cyrus helping Saeed put up a new bird feeder.

Our Weekend With Cyrus

Although Cyrus has slept over MANY times it was always with at least one parent here. This weekend his parents went to a wedding in Raleigh so the little bubsy was here by himself and he did great.

Charging forth with two balls hidden behind his back.

Frow! (love the foot hitched up like a real pitcher)

I tried to take him to Cherry Park but he fell asleep for over two hours in the car. By the time he woke up it was pouring rain so we went to Walmart instead and got some new crayons.

Cyrus caught up on his reading this weekend.

His best friend right now is Mickey Mouse. When I found out Cyrus would be a big brother I bought him a little baby doll so he could play around with the new baby idea. Here he's putting Mickey and baby to bed.

Good job Cyrus (well, sort of!)

He still loves this pop-up toy. Now that he's mastered each of the mechanisms that makes the animal pop up and knows which animal will be popping out of each section I think he feels such satisfaction.

Pretending to go to bed with Mickey.

The best part of this game is yelling "Beddup!" (get up) and getting up really fast.

Master of his domain.

Cyrus 'helped' his Baba put up a new bird feeder today. Here they are walking to the front yard to get the pole.

I love the way his little hand holds onto Saeed's leg.

Another plan for this weekend that never happened due to rain was to finally get out there and learn how to ride the tricycle.

Shortly after Shirin and Gabriel got back Cyrus must have gotten really excited and raced around the house like a maniac. After getting all sweaty he went into Saeed's computer area and absconded with Saeed's smiley face stickers. Perhaps the question should not be, "Why does Cyrus have smiley face stickers all over his face?" but, "Why does Saeed have smiley face stickers?"

The reunited family is on their way back to Athens and my videos are slowly uploading for later posting. This family of three may very well be a family of four the next time I see them, or if Shirin is laboring when I go, a family of nearly four. I think it feels somewhat surreal to all of us. We know and are used to Cyrus but pretty soon there will be a whole other person in the family. What will he look like? What will his temperament be like? Will he get those recessive genes and be blue eyed? Will Cyrus want to knock his block off?

To be continued...

Endurance Runner

Although my house is still in total chaos I noticed a story on the internet regarding Scott Jurek, whose progress I have loosely followed for years. He is an endurance runner of the highest sort. 26 mile marathon? HA! Try 24 hours and over 100 miles completed!

Last Thursday and Friday Jurek competed in a 24-Hour run in France, a run to see how many miles can be run in that amount of time. The American record was 162 (if I remember correctly it was set in 1999 by Mark Godale) -- Jurek completed 165 and came in second place. Why does this matter?

It matters because Jurek is a vegan. It's important to dispell the myth that vegans are weak and undernourished. There are more vegan athletes than you'd ever imagine, such as the Milwaukee Brewers first baseman Prince Fielder, and hockey player Georges Laraque. It's all about being smart about what you eat. You can be a healthy vegan or an unhealthy vegan, a healthy meat-eater or an unhealthy meat-eater. So it's time for antiveganites to zip it. (The American Dietetic Association position paper on vegetarian and vegan diets)

The Superhero

This morning I went downstairs to find all the food and water bowls that I've strewn around the house for the kitties and replenish for the day. Although the kitties have been freaked out by the amorphous plastic sheets they seem to have realized that they're not 'ghosts' but things to hide under and play behind. (Those poor guys are going to have to do some retaping this morning.)

So I'm standing by the coffee pot fixing my first cup of java when I hear Tippy run like a bullet from the computer room through the kitchen and head straight for the plastic sheeting by the living room. I'm transfixed as I watch her plow through the bottom right corner at 100 mph like a super hero! FEARLESS! She, of all the kitties, seems to quickly adjust to adversity and figure out what's a true threat and what she can just plow through like...

... SUPER KITTY!

The corner of plastic that has a super hero hole in it as of this morning.

The Chaos...

... continues.

--dining room--

The workmen are finding lots of kitty toys each time they move a big piece of furniture. This was under the hutch.

The kitchen is covered in plastic.

The eating area is now a big empty room with plastic sheeting blocking the entrance to the living room. Poor kitties have to go through the hall to get to the kitchen and beyond. They seemed less stressed today than yesterday.

The plastic sheeting as seen from the living room.

Tippy is the least affected by all the fuss; here she's calmly cleaning herself.

I have a kitchen table in my living room along with about 500 other things that don't belong there.

All the objects removed from the dining room hutch and glass cabinet are in the piano room.

Thank God we have other rooms to live in while all this is going on or I'd be a mental case!

Repainting The House

We've lived here for about 15 years now and that's a long time to go without repainting the walls. Saeed has spent his summers working on the yard and the house had to wait, but now that the yard has turned into a (nearly) self managing wildlife sanctuary and we can finally deal with the inside.

It's amazing how I can get used to ugly things. For 15 years I've been telling Saeed how much I hate this wallpaper the original owners put on.

The living room wall has had scratches and unwashable smudges on it for about 10 of those 15 years.

One more look at this beauty. Is is possible that this was ever good looking?

Nearly as bad was the plaid wallpaper in the bathroom.

This means that Saeed and I have to agree on wall paint colors. He and I agree on quite a few things but color has never been anything but a source of debate. He likes to go wild and crazy and artistic (life is too short!) and I like to match, coordinate, achieve a purpose such as lighten up a room (life is too long to live with the wrong colors!) Ultimately we have to come to some compromises. 

In the living room we've had a dusty rose which is nice and warm and inviting. Still, "pink" is not a color I like very much for a room unless the room belongs to six year old girl. After looking at the living room rug (below) I had decided to find a very pale grayish blue similar to the small accents in the rug, not the stronger powder blue that is more predominant. After days of trying to find a nice kitchen color that would coordinate since the two rooms flow into each other, I ended up caving in to Saeed's dusty rose again. I can't deny that the rose color is warmer than the icy blue, but I hope we can find a shade that is still warm but less pink.

I was trying to take a picture of the kitchen chair color through the table but of course Tippy had to get into the way.

This is currently our kitchen rug situation. Not great, but it's what we have right now. Saeed liked an "aloe" green that I agreed to. I don't think it matches the green below because it's much lighter -- we're trying to lighten this room because the lighting is so poor -- but it's a bright, cheerful color that complements the dusty rose well. Maybe we'll end up changing the rugs....

In addition to Tippy, Chappu was my constant buddy as I walked from area to area.

Our dining room is much browner that any of our other rooms. Color scheme of our dining room...

-rug-

-sofreh cloth-

-table runner on sofreh on table cloth-

... and our nice warm brown hutch. The wall is so white, so we've chosen a color that is still pale but has a touch of golden 'cider' in it to warm it up a bit.

Behind Chappu lie our color samples on the black case.

Saturday the men came and stripped some of our peeling ceilings and removed the plaid wallpaper from our bathroom. My mirror is gone for now. Poor Lupe. The man was clunking and banging so she spent the day in our closet. I noticed he had shut her in by closing the door but I always pay attention to things like that and let her out.

Our bathroom is currently cluttering up our normally tidy bedroom. I can't take a shower in our bathroom so thank God for the extra upstairs bathroom. It'll probably get a lot worse before it gets better.

Calvin is the other one who is very unhappy about these loud, strange men. As soon as they arrived he ran into his favorite hiding place, you know it, the coat closet at the end of the downstairs hall. Soon the two younger guys began stripped the ceiling in that hallway and closed Calvin in just like Lupe got closed in upstairs. Saeed and I are going to be doing a lot of head counts before this is over!

Enjoy The Reunion

A more personal post coming soon, but till then...

I bumped into this heart warming video of the man who raised and rehabilitated a gorilla to release into the wild. Five years after his release they meet again:



If you believe it is wrong to kill gorilla, chimps, and other wildlife go to The Jane Goodall Institute's petition and sign your name. There is an increased push to end this illegal practice.

The Shah Of Shahs

I borrowed this book from Neda and read it together with Saeed. Well, I read aloud while he drove - we finished it in less than two trips to Athens, about 12 hours. It was written by the Polish journalist and author Ryszard Kapuscinski who has covered revolutions around the world. He befriended Che Guevara, Salvador Allende, and Patrice Lumumba, witnessed 27 coups and was sentenced to death four times.

As cool as all that is I most appreciated his writing style. Wouldn't you think a book of this title in the section labeled "contemporary history/nonfiction" would be boring as hell? But Kapuscinski writes so smoothly, so descriptively, and with such wit that you forget you're reading a history book. He captivates your attention and then pulls you into subject like a lover entices his beloved. How does he do that?!?

In his poetic style Kapuscinski weaves the history of the fall of the most recent Shah of Iran, stories of the individuals participating in the Iranian revolution (and those trying to stay out of it), and his own observations and interpretations of the events that occurred. The first two thirds of Shah of Shahs focuses more on the historical background leading up to the revolution. The last third concerns the revolution itself. In this section Kapuscinski reflects on the nature of revolutions since he has experienced first hand dozens of them around the world. He observed that the people who come to power after a revolution aren't the same people who brought the regime down. He explains that in the case of Iran the people with a democratic vision took the greatest risks, suffered the most oppression, and caused the downfall of the Shah. Iran could not support a democracy, however, because the majority of the population preferred Islamic fundamentalism and got that in the form of Ayatollah Khomeini.

I particularly enjoyed Kapuscinski's observation of Persian men. They have certain behavioral tendencies when in a group, things Saeed's been telling me about for years, but to hear it described by someone else was quite astonishing and funny for me. So this is much more than a history book and if the topic interests you I highly recommend it. I will, however, have to return this particular copy to Neda.

Pics From The Weekend

Saeed has been waiting two years for Cyrus (who turned 2 today!) to get big enough to help him in the yard. The first thing he did Saturday morning was lure Cyrus outside for some gardening.

Planting tomatoes and peppers.

Watering.

Placing the stakes.

I should have taken before and after pictures, but after the manly yard work was done Cyrus was muddy from head to toe. I stripped him down to his diaper, threw his clothes in the washing machine, cleaned him up and put some fresh clothes on him. Now clean, he contentedly watched Baba from the safety of the back door.

The weather was gorgeous so off to Cherry Park we went.

Cyrus came too. Here he is mixin' it up with the big boys.

Cyrus still needs help with some things, but as you can see from the sign in the background this was the first time he was 'legal' --- Tot Lot Ages 2 - 4.

The two women watched from the bench.

What kid hasn't been put in a tree by his parents?

Cyrus and I rode in the back seat on the way home. He was sleepy so I tried to keep him awake by playing "let's make faces."

Happy face ('say cheese' is how you get this expression.)

Angry face.

Sad face... C'mon Cyrus, SAD face.

Very sad face...  Oh lord have mercy.

Surprised face! My surprise was that he can't do that one yet!

I have NO IDEA what this was.

The next six pictures were taken by Cyrus himself.

#1

#2 (there were about ten versions of this shot)

#3

#4

#5

#6

Everybody needs naps after the park. Here Shirin had just woken up from her nap when Cyrus called out for her. Funny thing is, once he got her, he fell back to sleep.

Baby Kai was moving under Cyrus but he slept right through the fetal earthquakes.

He manages to sleep in a curved position to make room for the belly, the little angel boy in a yellow Big Bird t-shirt.