Silly Birds and Giveaways...

Last night I planned on being good and going to sleep early (which, for me, is anytime before midnight).  This plan failed epically.  First, as I was dozing off to a hilarious taped-from-TV-in-the-eighties-with-commercials version of Mary Poppins, I was roused by repetitive and frantic banging on the opposite side of the wall behind my head.  I figured some cats were having a competition on the porch and went to break it up, when I met this guy.

(The photo on the right is a little fuzzy, the guy was panicking and flying all over the place.  His beak is open a little because apparently a stressed out bird kinda pants a little.)  

I ran out to see what the commotion was, and Zia had him cornered.  I got her in the house, and he flew up right into my forehead... and it hurt A LOT.  I also have a ridiculous fear of birds... they kinda weird me out.  They are so active all the time, and erratic... and I like being able to guess what move is gonna happen next.  Birds don't let you do that, unless they are big birds of prey or something.  In which case, they aren't as panicked all the time.  And we humans rarely see them close up (excluding the zoo and RennFest).

Anyway, our porch is open; no screens, no windows or anything, so I figured he would realize he was cat free and fly off free.  No.  Wrong again.  He flew around the porch beating himself against every support post and overhang, the ceiling and ceiling fans.  My guess is the lights confused him, and he was afraid to venture out in the dark.  So I took advantage of this "nobody will ever believe this" situation and made sure to get some video.  In which Tic-Tac came up and cameoed, and Zia frantically tried to learn to open the door and put the little guy out of his misery.

Please excuse our porch mess (and shoddy film quality, it was cold and 2 am)... renovations indoors means a lot of things are relocated out.  Also, yes, that is a giant "tattooed" rubber ducky.  I used to have all visitors sign it.  :)

In other news, Patchie and Her Boy came over for dinner last night, which was a nice change of pace.  Lately, I have appreciated having people around me more often to distract me from brooding and feeling depressed.  We talked shop (aka theatre), a bit about Bobby, a little about the wedding, a lot about funny things.  It felt good to be able to talk about Bobby but not brood.  This is healing, right?  I also had a lovely conversation with Squeebie today, who is in my wedding party and currently lives in Kansas.  She always makes me laugh and we are getting married around the same time (ish... because we are both involved in each other's weddings we are doing a lot of check ins on planning), and she has a crazy love for her fur-baby Stanley the Dalmatian, which always makes me giggle.  What a pick-me-up!

To reward readers for putting up with my lower spirits as of late, I want to alert you all to some giveaways happening on other blogs!  Hope you win... or I do... haha.

* Pixie Mama has an adorable giveaway going on now!

* The Dainty Squid has a MungoCrafts giveaway on her blog!  Eep!

* A Beautiful Mess has a Houndstooth Dress giveaway now!!!

* Tatertots & Jello has a super cute giveaway, too!