Musings and Mirth

Phoebe the Hummingbird Gives Birth

This is the most amazing thing. A teeny tiny humming bird built her little nest – which is about the size of a golf ball, if you can imagine that. And inside, are two little humming birds. They have to be about as big as a fingertip. I recently learned much about the precarious lives of humming birds on this PBS Nature episode, Magic in the Air.

Sad little facts about hummingbirds:

They have to eat nectar constantly or they can’t even survive the night.
They can hover, mid-air.
They have to lower their heart rate and puff up at night to prevent their own death.
They are great nest builders and the males have some really really cute behaviors for attracting a mate.

So, I got tipped off to the Phoebe-cam where you can watch her sitting on her little hatchlings.¬†¬† She’s so cute. Such a good little mommy. She must fly off, eat some food, fly back. I haven’t seen her feeding her babies in real time yet. But I’m sure I will at some point.

Here are some screen caps of the little babies:

Mourning the Death of a Friend

This is one reason why it’s great to have a blog. A few months ago, I found out my uncle Keith had died. He was my age, or just a year older, and we were more like friends than uncle and niece. He was an odd duck, nicknamed “Rass” by my departed grandmother, a severe alcoholic, and called Rass by all of us until he reached adulthood, when it was abandoned for his real name, Keith Sellers. He was a troubled soul, no doubt about it. They didn’t call him Rass for nothing. Named after Rasputin, Keith could be a real renegade and tyrant. He wasn’t so much mean as he was without filters or boundaries. He would say whatever he felt like saying and didn’t feel like softening it for anyone. Life got really hard for him in his last days.

He was only 45 when he died. He died in his sleep. Or so they say. But he left a very strange last update on Facebook about being lied to by someone he thought loved him. He was living in his car. He died on someone’s couch. These are details of his death. The details of his life weren’t much better. This past summer we had to talk him down from suicide. He had thought things through and decided this life wasn’t worth living. Funny thing about life – it can really seem like a drag if you don’t have a reason to live. Some of us have our children to keep us trying to live as long as possible. Some of us have our religion. Not me, but others of you out there, I’m sure. Some of us have an undeniable desire to survive because we’re hard-wired that way. But if you have no kids and you keep losing your job, you have no money and you basically have no one in this world who loves you — what have you got?

But what’s weird is that Facebook, I think, gives us a false sense of community. Yes, we are in touch with each other but what does that mean really? When he died, his identity, or avatar, lingered on Facebook – still lingers. His emails are still in my mail app. I can find comments of his from Facebook. He was a scary friend to have because he said anything he felt like, even if it wasn’t “PC,” especially if it wasn’t “PC.”

Even now, when I write something I expect one of his snarky replies. It is almost as if we have gotten in a fight and are ignoring each other via social networking. But no, he is gone. His real life body gone and burned to ash. We aren’t really so capable of understanding the complexities of this new dimension of relating to each other. We try, but what does it all mean? Anyway, I miss him.

Here we are as kids. Me in the orange shirt, Keith in the blue.

We did get in a fight a few times before he died. One, he had posted a really seriously hideous photo of me and had tagged it. Since I have a lot of followers of people I don’t know, naturally it felt invasive. It was a real low point for me anyway, after a terrible breakup. I had gained too much weight and couldn’t even bear to look at the photo, let alone have it on Facebook for all of my 500 and something friends to see. I told him to untag it. He refused. I asked him to take it down. He refused. So I defriended him. After a while, I refriended him but he never put the photo back up. I wish I wasn’t so weak of mind and soul sometimes. But I am, Blanche, I am.

His doctor had told him he only had a very short time to live and that he could die at any time. He didn’t really take care of himself. He was jobless – always getting fired for saying mean things to people — and homeless; he was sleeping in his car. He died on a friend’s couch.

Apologies

Oscar season has sucked up all of my time. But I am thinking about beginning a new project and I’m very excited about it. That means I will be updating more. Right now, I just want to say that my daughter and I keep watching Burn After Reading because it’s so funny. It funnier than I ever thought it was the first time I saw it.

Christmas and New Year’s have come and gone – and now it’s time to face down the next year of my finite life. I will try harder to update more.

Switching Servers

I have decided to go with Liquid Web for now. I know that come Oscar season, my website, will experience its usual crunch, especially during important announcement days. Otherwise, The Planet’s servers have been great. We’ll see how Liquid Web holds up. Fingers crossed I made the right decision. I realize that much of the problem is me and my inability or lack of education on how to run my own dedicated server. I’m one of those people who hates asking for directions and asking for help; I’d rather just do it alone. So far, I’m impressed with Liquid Web’s tech support. The Planet has pretty good support but most of the time they give you the stupid person’s recommendation first – like “did you try rebooting the server?” Uh. yeah.

This was my problem – I needed more IP address to redirect my websites to them. Since the server only gave me one or two, the other websites weren’t dedicated IPs but sharing IPs. That caused problems with the WordPress themes I was running. Since I didn’t know that at the time, I freaked out and quit The Planet. Anyway, Liquid Web gave me the extra IPs, no problem. So all is well again.

I’m thinking out loud on this in case there is any lost soul out there. This had to do with the GD library and Timthumb, by the way.

Final Day in Paris

I don’t know why it’s taking me so long to finish up my Paris trip. Maybe because I can linger on those days before I totally store it away in my memory for the long term. The one really strong memory I’ll have from Paris, and believe me, I already want to go back, is one night Emma and I stayed in the Hotel Foundary and watched Shakespeare in Love in its entirety. We found it on YouTube and watched one part after another in the dark hotel room. It was really great – and I can’t quite pinpoint why it was great – it had nothing to do with Paris particularly. We had one more day and we were wiped out in all possible ways. That was why we chose to hang out in the hotel instead of walking all over the place.

However, there were two places we wanted and needed to see. One was the Catacombs and the other was the Montparnasse cemetery. I wouldn’t want to live in Montparnasse – I like the other side of Paris better, over by the Marais and the Pompidou.

We decided to brave the Metro for the first time to get to the Catacombs and seriously, the Metro is a lot easier than you think. But you can’t bumble around like a dumbass – you have to kind of know what you’re doing. We wasted two tickets going to the wrong side but figured out our mistake the hard way. Once you get it you get it and it isn’t that bad, but god help you if you try to talk to any of the metro workers. The thing about people in Europe in general – they don’t care about you. But it’s especially true in France. They don’t care if you’re having a problem – it is not their problem. That aspect of European travel ALWAYS makes me feel better to be American. I tried to explain one problem I was having to one of the women working behind the glass but she brushed me off with a wave of her hand and a disgusted nod.

I really wanted to leave Paris. I thought I had mistakenly purchased a book of Metro tickets instead of one ticket – turns out I hadn’t but I thought I had. I guess I’m just used to American customer service where they give a damn because it makes a difference to their business. In France, health care is taken care of, wage is decent enough – there is no real competition so why bother?

Eventually, after a few transfers we found ourselves in Montparnasse proper and we headed to the Catacombs. The line was too long but we waited anyway. We wanted our last day in Paris to be easy-ish with just one or two things to see. This seemed like the perfect thing to do. We had a couple of loudmouthed Americans behind us talking as if they were the only people who existed. And I suddenly could relate to the Parisiennes hatred of us.

While we waited in line I went and got us a hot dog – one of those great Paris hot dogs with the hot mustard. Oh, those are almost worth the trip back for. Although there are so many things in Paris that call my name, even now.

Once inside the Catacombs you walk down an endless spiral staircase – down and down and down and down. It gets darker and colder and damper. You’re kind of grateful for the crowd because you know if your heart stops suddenly there are people to help you out. You walk a bit before you get to the bones and then it’s just wall upon wall of skulls and bones. It definitely puts one’s existence into perspective the way cemetery’s don’t; this isn’t about honoring an individual life – this is about how many people have come before, lived, had their little dramas and heartbreaks, minor successes, diseases and whatnot, and then died and became bones in a pile.

I couldn’t get out of there fast enough, although it had one upside: it was the only place in Paris so far that did not smell like piss.

Upon our exit, we decided to get a good street crepe, as opposed to the touristy kind. We found one at a small booth in Montparnasse – I got the orange and honey and Emma got the Nutella and banana (that is the one to get). They were delicious, even if they did drip all over us.

Afterwards, we wandered down to the cemetery, but to be perfectly honest, our feet could not take anymore walking. That was that for us. We hobbled over to Jean Paul Sartre’s grave, snapped a photo and then called it a day.

We got up very early, like 4am, in order to take our metro to the airport. We opted out of the Bee Shuttle because it had been so expensive the ride in. It was trippy but doable, lugging our suitcases down the cool streets of Paris, sans coffee, down the stairs and occasionally up the stairs. A nice gentleman helped us up one flight of stairs. There are kind people everywhere, you just have to be lucky enough to bump into one.

We finally got to the airport but we knew Emma’s passport had been lost there and was in the Lost and Found somewhere. We were told that it didn’t open until after 9am and our flight was to leave around 10am. Emma burst into tears after Security managed to get the Lost and Found opened but alas, no passport. Eventually we just went to our airline and they had her passport all along.

We boarded our plane and without incident, as in “international incident” we were flying out of Paris. Paris is the place of our sweetest dreams, even still. The longer the time between from then and now, the more we mature and grow, our memories filter out the stuff that made the beautiful city agonizing. And all that remains is that unending beauty. Paris captured my heart. I know I will be back there sooner rather than later. And I don’t even care that Paris doesn’t love me back. It’s an unrequited love and that isn’t the worst thing in the world.

The next thing to happen would be three connecting flights on our way back to LA – Paris to Milan, Milan to London, London to Los Angeles.

No Results Found

The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

About Me

I spend way too much thinking about me. This is the blank space where that paragraph should be.