Naive thy name is Hammy

I have been advised that after all my rapturous robin-parenting praise earlier today, that maybe the eggs weren't being cared for, not incubated with warmth of either parent blah. I hope that I had just momentarily scared away the robin, but then there was no dive-bombing by said bird, no berating of said intruder (me).

I will hold out for a positive ending. I can't fathom birds who could abandon their young but then ultimately, it's about survival. She could make more eggs. This is a strange parallel to my own experience 3 yrs ago. My body stopped encouraging my fetus (embryo) to develop, I am guessing my body sensed there would be massive health problems with my baby and just shut down production (lots of contributing factors me being too old having a first child, me taking a cocktail of SSRIs and anti-anxiety meds). Maybe robin mama senses there is something wrong with her eggs - or all of our curiousity left them too human smelly. I hope not for the latter reason, I don't like to kill any living creature. I save spiders and woodbugs (I encounter many in the firewood) and wasps and bees and even those kind of mini-dinosaur-looking earwigs.

It's hard not to think that I was defective when my baby stopped developing. I still grieve this loss so much. I wonder. everywhere I look here are babies, there are mothers walking with their daughters, laughing. It would be so wonderful. But I am afraid. And selfish too I think. Yet I try to be loving to everyone I meet, especially children, to let them know that there is kindness in the world. All I want is kindness.

Why do I hurt so much?

How spears and arrows (but not slings, sorry Hamlet) were discovered

I'm awake again, it's very late or very early - one of those in-between states. Raining hard, windy. Not so windy on as Friday, we had gusts of I believe hurricane magnitude. Lots of trees down, day long power outage. So Saturday was cleanup and also start working on recovering my badly neglected garden. Lots of grass and weeds and very aggressive ground cover with poor boundaries. Lots of pulling, digging, shoveling and I even transplanted a struggling hydrangea, I think it will be much happier in its new home. I love dirt, ate some too, by an accident, I start off wearing gloves but then I just can't stand it, rip them off and start digging and rooting up stuff with my hands. Couple of significant slivers.

What was most impressive were the sticks that the wind had driven into the ground - the ground is soft what with all of the ran, however, they were in there 3 or 4 inches. Got me thinking that #1 - that would leave a mark ; and B) this was how cavepeople discovered a simple weapon. Spears!Then of course advances in killing technology introduced the arrow and its friend the bow - look at us now eh?

The other day we got 4 cords of wood for next winter, but because we were away so much we still had a good cord left in the wood shed. So I moved as much as I could into another area and my husband discovered a robin's nest high up in the back of the shed, no eggs though so we moved it outside. After the storm settled down somewhat we checked the nest and there was an egg in it(!!) and we had our generator all set up in the shed, quasi-noisy exhaust etc. and we were flummoxed because we didn't have a new shelter for the nest. Anyhow, we were saved as the power finally came back on (8pm) and he placed the nest back on top of the wood where he'd found it. Hoping mama would ignore our human smell and come back to roost. Well, she did indeed, yesterday when I was putting my favourite tools away (wheel barrow and assorted digging and cutting devices) I thought I would peak in and see if the egg was still there - well bless my britches there were 2 eggs now! Pretty freaking cool, very inspiring and reassuring- what a great mom. Can't wait for the spring flying school in the backyard.

The nest itself was a wonder of engineering and just trying to imagine the time and number of flights required to gather all of the materials blew my brain. It was soft straw inside, and moss with twiggy bits woven outside with an upper ring of MUD - how the hell do they do that with their little beaks and large weight ratios - its boggles it does. All for its children, how wonderful. So I got to thinking about parenting as humans, and wondering how we compare. I am not a parent, so I cannot really speak to this - but the singular devotion of the robin was very touching.

In many of my digging forays I uncovered worms o'plenty so the robins have plenty to feast upon. They need it. Bless all worms.

My SSRI was increased slightly last week, so far so good.

Hammy