Squirmy and his new toy sheep

And no, the sheep is not trying to take out his jugular.

Budgies and babies

Budgies are a native Australian parrot that are also kept as pets. If a budgie becomes sick in the wild, it will become a target for predators, so it is in the best interests of the budgie to hide any illness and pretend that they are not ill. This means that if you have a pet budgie, they will also generally hide any sickness until they are so sick that it is usually too late to do anything about it and they fall off the proverbial perch.

Babies, on the other hand, don't hide sickness but are masters at concealing tiredness. Actually, they don't conceal tiredness but they are masters of making you think that you were mistaken when you thought they were tired. Let me explain further.

Squirmy McBaby will be happily playing on his mat and will then suddenly start to grizzle. Ok, now is he tired or just sick of being on his mat? Ok, let's play something else and the baby stops grizzling and is all smiles. Ten minutes later, and he's rubbing his eyes and arching his back. Yep, he's tired all right so off to bed for a nap. Pick the baby up, carry him to his room and put him in his bed. As soon as he hits the mattress he kicks his little legs and gives you the biggest smile ever and acts like he is the least tired little boy in the whole world.

While I haven't yet worked out the evolutionary or biological imperative behind this behaviour, I'm sure it'll come to me when I get a bit more sleep.

Laughing Squirmy McBaby

Snoring again

LG: "Buster, roll over you're snoring",
Buster: "I find that hard to believe".

Gardening at Casa Laziest

In the garden bed that runs along our driveway and separates our garden from George next doors, are three ugly and overgrown palm-type, multi-trunk plants. They, as is the nature of palm-type plants, are scrappy looking and shed fronds with frightening regularity. Not do they look ugly and make a mess, but they are also possessed by demons.

If, perchance, you decide to leave the car in the driveway instead of driving it into the garage, perhaps because you are going out again later and definitely not because you always stall the car when you try to drive it into the garage, they seem to lurk closer in a dense and intimidating manner. The driver can safely exit the vehicle, but if you try to get out the passenger side, you are smothered by their frondy-fingers which are very poky. Trying to get the baby out of his safety seat, fend off the fronds and then close the car door without allowing any palm fronds to take up residence within the car is no mean feat.

So today I saw George and tried to ascertain who is the actual owner of the Palms of Doom. George wanted to know why, so I outlined my long term plan for the future, which involves ripping all the palms out and planting Lillie Pillies. George, in an attempt to understand my motives, asked why I wanted to get rid of the Palms of Doom. I outlined my reasons, and George, while baffled by all my outlining, remained a true gentlemen and offered to prune back the offending fronds. "Why, thank you George", I said and went back inside to tell Buster. Several minutes later, I was roused by the sound of a chainsaw and went back out the front to find George "pruning" not just the offending fronds, but the offending trunks of the Palms of Doom, at ground level.

So he's exorcised about five trunks, which has made a tremendous difference to the state of the driveway. Let that be a lesson to the rest of you evil, frondy palms out there. Don't mess with a Russian with a chainsaw.