Maxima Love
That’s my big number. And we are on the way to the golden 200,000. I noticed that Maxima owners really love their car. Maybe it’s because they have been driving them for so long and for so many miles. I spend more money, and am willing to spend more money, to fix it than replace it. I have the 2004 version. (The best shape I think. Very “Maxima”.) Technically, and for full disclosure, I am not the original owner. That would be my BF. And he bought it brand spanking new. But we swapped cars a few years back, and my trade was destroyed in a terrible, totaling, highway accident (no injuries except the car) so I am claiming the Maxima as my own forever and always.
That’s the whole car. It needs some cosmetic work and it makes some strange noises, but it starts and takes me to work every day. If you love your Maxima, and have some time to burn, send me a comment, or a pic if you want. I know you are out there because I see you driving around in your Maxima, with the same look I have when I drive around in mine. For the most part. When I’m not dog-ass tired or coming home from work at 2 am. But I digress.Maxima people look at other Maxima people. Probably just to compare cars, but whatever. I’m not going to go into the whole big thing. Send me a comment!! We are so aggressive too. Just do it. Please. Anyway…
Let’s try to shake this site up today. My sister, the self-titled queen of all things interesting, decided that my site is too boring for her. So I am starting with fast cars (because that’s a huge reason for loving the Maxima in the first place–speed) and continuing with exciting, upcoming, posts such as, death. And pornography. I’m not kidding. I said death. With pictures. And porn. With pictures. Check back in a few if you are not automatically getting e-mails or following me. And if not, why not? Take the time and do it now. E-mail to the top right, or follow by clicking the link for it. Easy and one less thing to keep track of. I will come to you! Now that sounds exciting all by itself doesn’t it? But right now, I have other pressing matters to attend to that cannot wait. I must go to the local public perishables and supply institution. For long term staple items and body products. Bare bottom body products. Can I even type such scandal? Then I have to visit my pharmaceutical connection. I need to pick up some “medications” there. The good sh*t, that messes with your heart. Then I have to get ready to meet the brain trusts at the education center who will be teaching my children life-saving survival tactics for an ever changing, future based, random, potentially dangerous, world, that they have to be prepared for at all times. Their regimen includes hands on training, as well as written doctrine and instruction. Do not tell me that my life is boring. It is a daily grind to stay alive. And no one, I repeat, no one, gets out alive.
So don’t worry so much. Here’s some of that education in action. A picture that just sums it all up. Left on a note pad, on the coffee table, for us mere humans to decipher as we wish. Shake up the status quo every now and then. Analyze everything, and nothing, at the same time, and draw your own conclusions on how to proceed. Keep moving forward with as much kindness, and humor, as you can muster, and you should be just fine. Deep stuff. Random and hilarious. Like life itself. Later.
More Random Wild Life. For My Mom.
Chipmunks.
Rabbits. This is the mom I believe. She looks kind of beat.
Those ears kill me. They are gigantic. Is this technically a “hare”? Or a jackrabbit? Or just a plain, old, midwest rabbit? Probably doesn’t matter. I have a few more:
This was before babies. She (?) would be sitting out there in the rocks every day when we would leave and sometimes when we would come home. I can only assume it was a nice warm spot by the house. Our walls are literally brick and drywall thin. And our crappy metal windows basically blow air in all year round. It only makes sense that the hot air was coming through just as well. On the upside, I tell my family that we will never die of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. Too many leaks in the infrastructure. One less thing ya know?
The nest of babies. We found it by mistake. The one closest to the front obviously did not make it. But the other two were squirming around. There may have been three at one time but we have only seen two in the yard on a regular basis. Here’s one:
Isn’t that precious?
This is like one of those “find-the-rabbit-in-this-picture” pictures. Highlights magazine. Or am I the only one out here old enough to know about this?
Frog.
Another frog.
Let’s keep working this water theme. Ducks. And baby ducks.
Mom and dad ducks.
City ducks. Chicago Lock Ducks. That’s prob a good name for some kind of team. The Chicago Lock Ducks! Swimming into stadiums near you! Eh. Let’s just post the pics.
To wrap up this very long segment, I will end with the fish and turtles inside of our house. The time is ticking away and my daughter wants to go out. Here is the old stuff and current stuff. Oscars, from young to old. Then the turtles, in order of growth.
When you come up to the tank, they swim to the glass to see you. So friendly like. We had 4. Now we only have 2. Sad. What’s really sad is that we are kind of waiting for the other two, to, ummm, perish, if you will. They live forever and you can’t put anything new into the tank with them because they will attack and kill it. Not all, Great White shark attack killing, or gnashing teeth piranha swarming blood bath, no, they just head butt and try to clamp down with their giant mouths and take pieces out of the other fish until the poor sucker cowers into a corner, sinks to the bottom of the tank and die. Nice fish huh?
Awwwww. So cute.
Turtle as art. This is how they look now.
All awkward and on top of each other. Their tank is really too small now.
Just as an extra note to anyone that has turtles and a turtle tank that gets really dirty: Spend the 8 dollars on this moss ball thing. It really works. It looks ridiculous, and you are basically paying for something you could scoop out of a creek at the Forest Preserve, but hey, nature isn’t always pretty.
So there ya go mom! I saved all the squirrel pictures and the skulking black cat that prowls around our backyard for their own separate posts. And there is A LOT. The squirrels we have in our yard are very crazy, so they need their own special column here. And the cat is just a cat, but I have various pictures of it doing predator-like things that I feel make it worthy of its own posting too. Plus, this is like 3 pages long. It’s enough. And I found more birds and flowers. And inanimate animals. I really like taking pictures of statues and fake animals too apparently. It’s a disease. It’s also 85 degrees and Saturday afternoon, and my day off. I need to get up out of this house and hit the streets. There is shopping to be shopped, dinner to be gotten, and drinks to be drank. Everyone have a safe night and I will post more. Later.
When Was The Last Time I Posted Flower Pics?
Today! These were taken with the phone camera. Over the summer. Still cleaning out the picture folders. Aren’t you lucky?
That’s pretty good for a phone camera, as I continue to brag about the Galaxy S4. You can see the little cobwebs on the flower. It’s ridiculous!
I think that’s all for today. The oven timer that marks the movement of my life and death is beeping away, reminding me that I need to go. One more shift to get through and then I am off for the weekend. Shew. These long weeks kill me. FYI, you can always click on the image when you are viewing it to make it larger. It will open nice and big and you can see all that beautiful detail that I keep bragging about. It’s especially nice with those Hawk pictures below. You can really see into that birds soul. Not really. But try it. More birds to come. Later!
Raccoon In A Can.
Just going to do this now, and move on with my life! We did not harm the creature. We rolled the can to the grass. Laid it down very slow and gently and opened the lid. We gave the can a little nudge and the raccoon ran out scared and confused while we just stood there waiting for it to pick a direction. End of story. Again, have a great day all!
On Another Stinky Note…And One More Hawk Picture! Scroll down!
Skunk. There was actually 2. It looked like a mom (?) and her baby (?) skunk. They were just eating any and all the leftover crap I throw out there because I know that the wildlife comes. Usually the raccoons crawl into our garbage can and dig out what they want and leave a mess, so I try to save them the hassle. The garbage can is one of those tall, basic, flip-top carts, that almost every city in America now uses for garbage per the town they live in, be it brown, blue, green, etc. In fact, I have a picture of a small raccoon that got stuck in the garbage can, at the bottom, because it was too small to reach and be able to crawl back out. Or too weak to push up the lid once it was in. I will try and get that up next. Prob tomorrow though. Work again. Poo. The same night this skunk was around we also had an opossum. But it ran away when I tried to take the picture. The skunks, literally, do not care. They will just stay there until you make a very loud noise, and even then, they kind of look up and wait a minute, to see if you are really serious, before they lift their tail and waddle towards the back weeds. Brave. They know they have the stink power. No one is going to go rushing up on that. Let me end this now with my last picture of the beautiful hawk that I got as close to as I could before it lifted off the ground and flew away. It was really looking at me. It definitely has that bad-ass-predator-air about it. It knows too, there was no way I was going to try and hurt it. It was sizing me up and dismissing me while I stood there taking the same picture over and over. Actual wild nature can make a gal feel pretty small in a big world. But happy to be a part of it. Every one have a great day! Later.
Hawk.
And two for some size reference, zoomed out a bit. He/she was prob the size of a cat maybe. Very impressive I thought. Work calls. Later.
Monday Was A Good Day
Two quick pics to keep this site interesting and I am going to get ready for work. Monday was a good day for my viewing numbers–Thank you all for following me!–and it was good for life in general. I felt very good and healthy. Very glad to be alive and thankful for life and family and a job that allows me to have days off during the week. Living the dream, for realz. Haha. Anyhoo, I also managed to accomplish most of my list goals, including shop for food for the fam for the rest of the week while I am at work, and laundry. Sort of. It’s not piled up on the floor, so it counts. I had a hawk in the backyard, first thing, yesterday morning, 7 AM. A hawk. Just sitting there, on the ground, under the bird feeder, scaring away every other species of wildlife in the area. No joke. Not one other animal-like creature, be it bird, squirrel, butterfly, chipmunk, rabbit, etc…, was in my yard the entire time the hawk sat there. And it was very quiet too. No sounds. Not even bugs and insects dare make a peep when the top-of-the-food-chain predator for our little suburb decides to pop a squat after a long night of hunting or whatever it was doing. Of course I got pictures. About 100. Wait until you see them! This is the enticing, hanging story line, that I am using to bring you back tomorrow. I have to sort the pics and pick out the non-blurry ones. And I truly do not have time. As usual, I am pushing my “wasting” time into my actual “need to go” time. If it’s a good night tonight at the old general store, I will post them later, if not, then in the AM when I crawl out of bed. This is the nice time of year for weather around here so everyone enjoy and I will be back. Later.
And Just Like That, Summer Is Over
And my vacation. And the BF’s vacation. And actually summer was over on Wednesday of last week. But I really was on vacation, and I did not post one darn thing to this site! I used Facebook to track a few things we did, but I tried to stay away from the technology if I could. Quick re-cap: The kids are both settled into high school so far, schedules, practice, even homework already. The BF took his motorcycle trip to “The Tail of The Dragon” (and got rained on every single day), and he’s home again. I had a stay-cation and accomplished about half of a list of things to do. And now I have work in a few hours. The BF goes back in the AM. Just a typical pre-autumn Sunday morning. The pic above is from when we fished. I’ll post the arty stuff later. Maybe. I’m not good at follow up apparently. I did manage to consolidate all my picture folders though, so I feel good about that. Everything that I want to use is in one tidy spot. And all my closets are cleaned! I know, go crazy on vacay. I told you, it’s not always an exciting life. Sometimes you have to clean closets. And it takes a week to do them. The laundry is done too. AND the socks are matched and put away. The socks. My giant, month-long, loose basket, of 4-people socks, is gone and done. My kids didn’t even have a spot for socks anymore in their dressers because they have been wearing them straight from the basket for so long. Anyway, I have to hit the shower. I am hoping for a quick and painless night on my first day back. Luckily, Monday is my normal day off, and then I can really prepare for the work jump with the next 4 days on. At least I have the weekend! Ok. Well, thanks for staying with me, or checking here to see if anything was happening, I will start daily again. As a special surprise, I found all my street money in one of the closets and that needs to be posted asap. We found a one hundred dollar bill last year! And birds. And benches. And wildlife. Birds and benches and wildlife, on my. So you can see, the thrill-ride continues. Let me also just put those extra fishing pics here for you right now. There’s not even a lot of them. And no actual fish. We didn’t catch a thing. Later.
For The Birds
Hummingbird. Perched. I have more but I can’t find them. Sad face.
The Hawk we had hanging out in the backyard earlier in the spring.
Blue Jay.
Red Winged Blackbird.
Cardinal. Male.
Cardinal. Male. Another one? The same one? Not sure, we had several pairs flying around, yelling all spring.
Cardinals are my favorite bird.
Cardinal. Female. Pretty sure. She’s so scraggly looking. Women of the wild. Not fair.
Yellow Goldfinch. If you look in the middle of the picture. These birds hardly ever come and pose right in front of me. So annoying.
Nuthatch. Thought it was a woodpecker for a very long time.
Don’t know what kind but I like the picture.
Last shot for the morning. Can’t tell what bird this was, I took this picture mostly for that “arty” effect. I have more birds but I really need to go now. Have a fab afternoon. Later.
Another Bug
Hanging out near my sitting spot Friday morning. No harm came to this creature by my hand. I just photo’d him and put him back near a tree. I’m going to do some bird pictures next. Something pretty. I have work today. I am tired. My shift is going to be good. I am telling myself that because I want to have a positive attitude. Super Saturday! We will see.
just shy of pretty 