All the News That's Fit to Print

Fio started cleaning out her office closet and discovered she will never need to patronize Office Depot again.  Paper, envelopes, file folders, binders--she's overflowing with them. She also discovered that she'd saved copies of her home-made Christmas cards for what looks like thirty years back. All this and, so far, all she's gone through are two shelves. What wonders await her in the rest of her closet? Narnia?
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Fiorella caught Husband watching a television sensational on the Caylee Anthony trial and blew a gasket. Having shoved that whole horrible, disgusting, sick episode into a dark room of her mind, locked the door, and lost the key, Fio did not appreciate Husband asking whether or not she thought that lying slut was guilty.
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Younger Son stopped by today for a long visit and Daughter is coming by tomorrow. Nice.
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Has Fio told you that not only do we have a cardinal who attacks our dining room window, but a whipperwill who tries to keep us awake when we try to go to sleep at night? And a bobwhite who awakes us every morning, whether we want to be or not?
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Fiorella cringes every time she drives by the land on our boondocks road which is being cleared for new additions. She understands that people need homes, but what about the carbon thing and global warming.

Males and Females

It was about eight, but the morning was dark, cool. and still except for the territorial bickering of two male cardinals.  The desire to control land must be built into the male genome.  All that females want is a safe place to rear their babies.

Birds, Blogs, Blank

Husband, who likes to watch birds, has placed binoculars on the upstairs bedroom windowsill, the upstairs hall windowsill, the living room windowsill, and the den windowsill. Fiorella has placed  note pads and pens on her bathroom counter, on her desk in her office, and on the hassock in front of the couch in the den. We believe in availability.
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Fio ran off all of her 2015 blogs yesterday, and today she'll get the pages drilled so she can put them in a loose-leaf notebook.  She'd like to think that someone--maybe one of her children, maybe a researcher--might be interested in her literary endeavors.  But even if her name gets lost, if every page gets tossed into a fire, her words are out there in the universe for eternity.
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Fiorella, who likes to thinks in threes, is searching for something else to say, but is coming up blank.

Springtime in the Hill Country

The wildflowers pave the fields
The whitetail does are fat with fawn
The birds pipe cheerful melodies
And armadillos plow my lawn

Relief Is in Sight!

Fiorella's finished her Christmas decorating!

Well, not quite--she can't stage the mantel over the fireplace in the den until Husband connects up the lights on the little houses, and there's a plateful of clip-on birds sitting on the dining room table that she has to put somewhere, and the mailbox that needs to have a bow tied around it, and the tinsel garland at the entrance to the driveway that has to be repaired.  But after all of that is taken care of, Fiorella can sit down and relax.

Relax?  No--she has presents to wrap, a contract relating to the family business to get signed by Husband and Nephew, and her own publishing contract to find and sign.

Still, she's more up to date than most years.

Holiday Frenzy

Santa's not the only one who's making a list and checking it twice.  Fiorella makes a new list every day from the remnants of yesterday's list, then checks it hourly.  The cards are out, the one gift that had to be mailed is on its way, the tree is decorated except for the tinsel icicles, the snowflakes went on the windows last week, and most of the gifts are bought.  Today Fiorella plans to hang her collection of  fruit and vegetable ornaments from the dining room greenery, arrange the multiple creches on the buffet, festoon the light over the dining table, and add bows, birds, and butterflies to everything she's already decorated.  She'll also go out at some time to pick up the manicure salon gift card daughter wants, locate tinsel icicles, and check out WalMart for gingerbread mix

Oh, and did she mention that she's been practicing carols on the piano for the past six weeks?  (Not that you could tell.)

Holiday Decor

Fiorella decorated her elephants yesterday.  The pachyderm parade that marches across a forty-eight inch-long shelf  in the den is now sporting red bows around their necks  Today she'll necktie the Mexican birds on the shelf above them--and the eighteen-inch tall ceramic pelican on the shelf beside them.  The beer stein collection on the other side of the fireplace will be similarly beribboned, as will the painted duck decoy across from the steins.

Yes, Fio is a decorating fool. If you see her coming toward you with a glazed look in her eye and a spool of ribbon in her hand, RUN!

Fervor

Another one of those things that sets Fiorella apart from the rest of the human race is the way she decorates for Christmas--extensively.  She hauls in her venerable fake tree, whines till Husband lights it up for her, then loads its branches.  She festoons doorways, windows, the stairs, and even the bedroom balcony railing with ersatz greenery, bells, bows, and pine cones.  She sets up manger scenes and ties a red bow around anything with the semblance of a neck.  She dangles decorations from the dining room light fixture.  She tapes paper snowflakes to the windowpanes, hangs up wreaths on the doors and and stockings over the fireplace, loops silver garlands along the driveway for a holiday welcome, and, if she whines again, Husband or Son will help her hang glittery snowflakes from a small tree in the yard. 

And that's just the beginning. She didn't even mention her box of feather butterflies and paper mache birds.

Noisy Planet

Seven a.m., when Fio takes Sonya Dog into the backyard every morning, is a very noisy time out in the boondocks. The air is full of high-pitched chirps, tweets, pipings, rattles, coos. and crows, an orchestra of soprano instruments.

Lower the pitch a couple of octaves and Fiorella would be hearing dinosaurs. The din must have been deafening. Fio wonders--has the planet ever been silent? Maybe Earth's vocalizations are what distinguish us from the rest of the universe.

Bird House

A bird flew into the house yesterday. Then another bird zoomed in after it. Fio had left the back door open to allow Bosco, Son's pug, to go in and out, but she didn't expect any visitors. Husband, whose mother had national standing in the Audubon Society's birdwatcher list, immediately identified the invaders as wrens, probably a mating pair--at least that's what the male was intent on.

Husband caught the female in a towel after a half-hour chase around the den, but the male was more difficult, soaring up to the second floor, then swooping downstairs again to perch picturesquely on the pan holder over the kitchen island, the frames of several paintings, the Christmas decor, and anywhere else he was unreachable. Two hours later, Husband still hadn't cornered him or chased him outside, despite Bosco Dog's best efforts--turns out he's an excellent pointer.

Fiorella wishes she could tell you the end of this tale, but she doesn't know what happened to her avian Lothario, whether he escaped out the still-open back door while Fio and Husband were taking a breather, or whether he's still lurking in the house somewhere, ready to take to flight the second they fall asleep, setting off all the security alarms.

The other option is that birdie gave himself a fatal blow to the head while trying to kamikaze through the dining room window, and his small, dead body is rotting behind the Javanese folding screen.

Honey, I Shrank Humanity!

The armadillos are still ravaging the lawn and the birds are still after the windows. We are under attack by two ancient species.

Interestingly enough, the armadillos haven't changed for eons, but you know what the birds evolved from, which makes Fio wonder if homo sapiens will ever dwindle down to one tenth--or even one-hundredth--their current size. Interesting idea. It would mean we'd all take up a lot less space and consume a lot less food, which might save the planet. But we'd also be more vulnerable to predators. And Husband thinks we might start breeding like rabbits in the bargain.

But for a more immediate question, if the titmouse's pecking makes our windows crack, can we sue?

Quoth the Raven

Who's that knock-knockin' at my door? And windows?

Fio runs to the front door to see who's rapping while Wendy Dog charges up the stairs to the window on the landing. But no one's there. Returning to the den, they settle in again, Fio on the couch to continue working on chapter fifteen, Wendy on her raised bed to recover from her strenuous labor.

Tap. Tap-tap. Fio and Wendy rush to their stations again, still to no avail. Fiorella steps outside to see if a FedEx delivery person maybe dropped a package at on the porch and sped silently back up the drive. But no package, no nobody, no nothing.

Tap-tap-tap. Wendy rushes all over the house, barking and looking out, but Fio heads straight to the glass front door just in time to catch a glimpse of a lavender-colored bird sporting a dramatic black crest.

When Husband gets home, he hauls out his mother's old copy of Field Guide to Texas Birds and looks for likely candidates, but none quite fit the--uh--bill. "Is there such a thing as a black-crested titmouse?" Fio asked. Where that came from, she'll never know, but it was spot on, pages 172 and 141.

So now Fio has an identity for her avian visitor, but why the constant visitation?