Husbandless and birds

Dh has gone away again. Nothing new there, except the new job was supposed to mean that he'd be at home for more of the time. We spent large chunks of a marriage apart and it's only been since June that we have properly been living together, so the learning curve has been fairly steep. I've wanted to murder him on a virtually daily basis. It's amazing how quickly annoying habits get forgotten, only to reappear wearing bright green neon clothes when he gets back. But, as he's only been gone since this morning, I'm still aware of the habits and not missing either him or them yet! He's back on Friday morning. I celebrated tonight by accidentally falling asleep on the sofa whilst feeding Lal at 6.45, and only woke when G came downstairs (after finishing her homework, angel that she is) at 8.45 and said "You do realise that I'm the only person who is awake in this house!?" umm.. oops? Terrible mother alert? I get those quite often.

Not much of note has happened today, Lal's been a bit subdued, and G had a dentist appt. Can't believe it, but she doesn't need any fillings, and they still can't get started on her braces as she STILL has three baby teeth! Back again in 6 months, and if they haven't gone then, she'll have to have them taken out.

As it was another boring day.. I have searched the dark recesses of my mind for something funny.. and found this memory. Another vicious bird attack. It happened on a winter morning in the year 1999, when G was three....

I was taking her to nursery, which was a 15 minute drive (in good traffic) from our house. The morning had started well, and the drive was pleasant, when there was a BANG on the front window. A bird had flown into it and smooshed itself, broke its neck and died. Very sad for the bird. Not so good for us.. Due to the broken neck, the birds head had become twisted so its beady little eyes were looking directly at us.. its feathers blowing in the wind. G was terrified (well before the days of car safety.. she was in the front seat- how old does that make me?) and not a little freaked out by the damn bird. Sadly, it was bleeding so there were little spots of blood on the windscreen. To distract G, I told her to close her eyes and that I'd sing to her. The best choice I could summon up, was "Two little dicky birds" possibly slightly inappropriate, but when you're looking at a dead bird stuck under your windscreen wiper, you can only come up with bird choices...
We were still 10 mins away from nursery.. I have the whole bird terror thing, and I had no option but to keep driving. And then it started to drizzle with rain. What to do? Make driving easier by turning wipers on and allowing dead bird juice to travel further over the window? Or try and peer through the rain spots. I peered. Couldn't stomach the other.
Had to have a long conversation with G about dead birds, and how "of course they go to heaven" .. of course they do. God loves all the animals and birds in the sky. Blood spots are getting bigger and my front windscreen is starting to resemble a particularly gruesome episode of CSI.. Grissom will be along in a min measuring bloodpools ad taking samples for DNA.
Finally arrived at nursery... got G out of car and ran inside, begged one of the nursery nurses to help me with the bird. Nursery nurses were far less squeamish than me, got a piece of cardboard, and some rubber gloves, and removed by now squashed and mutilated bird from windscreen and dumped it in the bin. G saw the bird going into the bin, followed by me compulsively crossing myself, praising God that I had survived the experience, and remained convinced for 4 years that heaven was in the bin. She became phobic about putting rubbish in bins.. would only ever put it into a carrier bag.... wonder what she thought of skips?

So that is part two, but really part one of why I am so scared of birds. There was also the time that I had my very own Godfather moment. The cat caught a bird and left it dead downstairs. The dog wanted to take credit for the find, so brought it upstairs. I woke up, opened my eyes.... there was a dead bird on my pillow. I have no words to describe the panic.

K x x