Serenity
Sort of for Pink October. Still getting the mammo on Thursday. Updates will be given. This picture was taken by the girl with the IPhone. All credits to her. Have a fabulous Sunday morning. Football and shopping for clothes—I need business casual for next week. No scrubs. Sad face. The administrator doesn’t like them for the managers even if you are still a nurse who will walk the floor. I will feel very lucky if I find one good outfit that I don’t feel like an alien in. And we need plant cell project supplies. It’s that time of year again in Biology class. And the boy and girl need Homecoming fancy wear. All in one afternoon? Stay tuned!
Fall Flower Close Ups For My Family On Friday
I am really working the “F” thing. Sorry for that. But I mean, what the hell. I have the pictures. Now I have to go to work but still try to stay relevant in the blogger world. If all goes according to plan, this will be my last day as a floor nurse and a PM shifter. It’s kind of slippery to slide work news in between fancy flower pictures, but, bombshell info, I will be switching to days next week and also becoming the manager of my unit. Pause for applause. Thank you. And did I mention that it’s Monday through Friday with no weekends, except for on-call every 4 weeks?? Taking the next steps in an upward position. Kind of scared actually, but I think I can do this job. And I think I can do it well. It’s a boatload more responsibility dealing with patients, families, corporate and state regulations and regulators. My new boss, who used to do the job that I will be doing, has been asking me every few days for the last few weeks if I still want to do this. Will I sign? Am I sure? Not in a negative way, but in the positive way to be sure that I don’t change my mind. How bad can it be when you have the support of the previous job holder? I type, so naively. My coworkers are already calling me boss, and I have been working on a clever post-it note system of employee relations that I want to incorporate for when I have to discipline or encourage any of my former co-workers. Everyone loves post-it notes, and wouldn’t it be less of a blow to get yelled at via post-it note? I think so. I’m going to color coordinate and everyone gets to pick their own. It’s also interactive! And that’s all there is to it right? Hahahaha. Soooo delusional. Anyway, more on that later. I will also be going back to school. Corporate has already heavily advised me that it would be a good idea. So, as usual, let’s jump in the pool, both feet forward and off the ground. No turning back, cause it’s too late when you’ve already signed on the dotted line. In even more news, I have to get my first mammogram next week. Also something I am nervous about. So, welcome again, !, and happy October. We have job news, school news and boob news. This site really has everything! Please share and share and share! Now, let’s see if any of my family still reads this. Just kidding. I’m gonna call all those crazies personally in the next hour. But in the meantime, here’s another picture. It’s orange. 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!
Feed Me Seymour! Feed Me!
Now that might not seem very impressive all on its own, but it is, when you consider that it started like this:
We don’t even know where it came from. That is our “big stump” pile, this bit of nature is growing out of, from when that broken tree was removed so many months ago. I came out one day and there it was. A plant. We decided to leave it because it looked like an actual plant and not a weed. The neighbor behind us has a garden and this same plant is in it. We think zucchini, squash, pumpkin, you know, something like that. Big leaves. Yellow flowers. Super fast growth. Like, accelerated, sonic, creeping, crawling, curling over the branches, type of fast growing. We figured maybe a bird or squirrel or rabbit carried one of the seeds over to our area and poof. Now we have a garden too! Mind you, we have done nothing to this plant. Nothing. No water. No weeding. No maintenance whatsoever. My thought was, that if it really wants to survive, it will have to survive on its own. Survive and thrive. It’s definitely doing that. Every day the thing seems like it’s getting bigger and bigger. When I went out yesterday, my first thought was: Little Shop Of Horrors. Hence the title above. It’s actually kind of scary. Old time movie scary. One day I expect one of those leaves and one of those long, thick stems to be sitting outside the back door tapping on the screen, holding a dead animal. “I’m hungry, Seymour!” “I’m hungry, Lisa!” Damn nature, you scary! (Reference: Tracy Morgan–SNL) And how do you know my name?? OK. Well we have been waiting to see if anything else is gonna grow off this thing except some yellow flowers. This is a good one I took a picture of today:
And then I looked closer. I will admit, as crazy as this sounds, that I was somewhat hesitant to go sticking my hands and arms into the leaves because the plant seems so Jurassic and kind of menacing. But I did. Because I am a human being. A human who is way bigger than a plant and not in a horror movie, or completely “eccentric” or insane at this point in my life. And this is what I saw:
It looks like a squash! Actual food? Maybe? Should we eat it if it actually turns into a vegetable? Is squash a vegetable or a fruit? I don’t know. It’s pretty big I think already, but I have nothing to compare it to, except the other smaller one growing next to it.
So that was my morning. Now I have to go to work. I will keep everyone updated on this gripping tale of, “Growing Something In The Wild!” Ha. Wild. More like, “Growing Something Accidentally In A Suburban Backyard Stick Pile!” Now that, is scary! Later!
New Flower Alert!
New chance to take an extreme close up with my fancy phone camera. Thank you to all who are “liking” my pictures and following along here every day! I am trying to like back and follow you too! There is so much good stuff out there in this big big world! I will try and make my words and pictures as interesting as possible. This is one small life, living. And sometimes it is just about doing laundry and taking a picture of some flower in your front yard. Simple stuff. Anywhere on Earth. That sounds like Sunday philosophy not Friday fun, so let’s get the boy’s pics up here before I go to work and bring down the whole day. One more shift and then I am off for the weekend. I am tired. But not tired enough, apparently, to stay in bed instead of walk around the outside for hours inspecting the greenery. Here’s one to start us off. Taken at Land Between The Lakes. It’s an ironic picture.
And This Is Really Showing Off
Again, with the S4. I took it this morning when I was dead heading my flowers that I have somehow managed to bring back to life. Please feel free to click the image so it gets really big, and you can get in there, nice and close, and see all the detail, clarity, and acuity I am working with over here. Using my phone camera. I have to go to work now, but hopefully my son can impress everyone later with the pictures he took with his S4, before we had to replace it. I managed to forward about 10 of the 50 or 60 pics on the camera before it got shut down. I scrolled fast and tried to save the best. We’ll see.
This Is Just Showing Off
Samsung Galaxy S4. My front facing camera is better than your back camera. Just saying. These were all taken with the S4. This is a cell phone camera. Jelly much?
And Now Back To The Cutting Edge
The butterfly blooms are finally coming in. It’s not just a patch of weeds if flowers are visible and butterflies hover. Looks like I may have sprinkled the seeds pretty evenly this year too. No gaps or thin areas. Texture and color variety. Cutting edge. As promised.
just shy of pretty 