Cockatiel Artisans Craft Map of United States

I may not have a state-of-the-art kitchen in my 100+-year-old house, but I'm certain ours is the only kitchen on the planet with a map of the United States created by cockatiels.
We have two cockatiels, Pearl (mostly gray with the conventional orange ear spots and yellow crest) and Jazz (white with a yellow crest). Pearl is 11 and we've had him since he was a baby; Jazz's age is undetermined as she was given to us by someone after her roommate's cat ate her parakeet and we never thought to ask her age. We've had her for about five years.
Although they don't particularly get along, they have been taking part in an artistic collaboration in our kitchen for a couple of years.
When we're working in the kitchen, Pearl and Jazz like to roam along the counter tops and explore. A favorite pastime is to climb up on the raised edge of the counter where it joins the wall and then mosey along between the wall and the bread box, making funny hissing noises at some imaginary foe who might be hiding in the cupboards down below.
At some point, one of them started pecking a hole in the wallpaper where the raised edge of the counter meets the wall. We didn't stop them because we were planning to eventually remodel the kitchen and that would have become cupboard space.
Whenever one of the birds was stationed at that point on the counter edge, they would work on this little project.
One day I was looking at it and realized it bore a distinct resemblance to a partial map of the continental United States. The map has continued to evolve, with Pearl working on the western US and Jazz on the Eastern Seaboard. She hasn't completed Florida yet and Texas/Louisiana/Gulf of Mexico is still in progress, but it's coming along quite nicely.
Friends and relatives entering our kitchen politely refrain from commenting on the gaping hole in the wallpaper. A stranger would probably be aghast that we let our birds run wild and vandalize the interior decorating.
But we're rather proud of our talented team of aspiring avian artists. They're probably going to be quite upset with us if we ever have the audacity to actually remodel the kitchen, demolishing their cartographic masterpiece in the process!

Was your last visit to the dentist comfortable?

I was driving my mother-in-law, who has Alzheimer's, to the store one afternoon and she was reading all the signs aloud, as she was prone to do at that stage of the disease. I wasn't really listening until I noticed she'd burst out laughing.
Her laugh is very infectious and it made me laugh too, especially when I realized what had provoked her laughter - the sign she'd just read: "Comfort Dental".
I'd passed that sign on numerous occasions and had never caught the inherent humor. I thought that it was pretty amazing that, in spite of her Alzheimer's, she was capable of recognizing a euphemistic oxymoron. To be quite sure that was what had tickled her funny bone, I asked her, "Why were you laughing at the Comfort Dental sign?"
To which she responded something like, "That seems contradictory."
Apparently she, like many other people, had not found the majority of her dental experiences to be particularly comfortable.
After that, whenever we needed a little amusement, I'd just drive by the sign, and she'd invariably read it aloud and chuckle. She might not always remember who I was or that she was living with us. And she probably didn't realize she'd had the same reaction to the sign several times before.
But she still had that ingrained sense of humor that inspired her to laugh at the mixed concepts of comfort and dentistry. Which I think is a very interesting reflection upon both Alzheimer's and my mother-in-law's well-developed sense of humor.

Showdown at the Rio Crockpot

Married for 25 years, my husband and I still experience some "firsts". For instance, we had an argument last night, and for the first time in recorded history, he was right, and I admitted to being wrong.

The confrontation was about my boss's crockpot, which I was cleaning after a chili cook-off. When I tried to wash it, I couldn't get the ceramic pot out of the metal canister, despite pulling really hard and turning it upside down.

Apparently some chili had lodged itself between the pot and the metal, in effect gluing them together. Frustrated, I sought my husband's assistance. In the midst of a computer game, he wasn't eager to help. But he hadn't gotten to the ogre battle yet because if he had, I could've yelled, "The house is burning!" and he'd have responded, "That's nice, Honey."

While I gripped the ceramic handles, he pulled REALLY hard on the metal. We also twisted it, but all to no avail.

He finally announced, "It's not stuck; it just doesn't come apart."

Yes, it did come apart, I explained. Crockpots come in two pieces, which can always be separated. You know the routine: he was convinced he was right, but as an inherently superior female with years of crockpot experience, I knew I was right.

Disgusted, My husband returned to his computer game. I reconnoitered by calling another inherently right female - my boss - to find out what was up with this crockpot.

"Oh, it doesn't come apart," she said. "It's one of the old ones and that's how they were made back then."

Thinking I'd heard her incorrectly, I asked her to repeat it. Which she did, adding, "They're a real pain to clean!"

A pain to clean! That was the least of my worries! I'd rather clean ten messy crockpots than have to tell my husband....well, you know...that he was actually right.

I mulled over some possible scenarios. I could:

a.) not mention it again and hope he'd forgotten about it;

b.) tell him my boss said to return it as is, because it sometimes got stuck like that;

c.) switch hers with ours (somewhat similar in color - sort of a burnt umber); or

d.) go buy a burnt umber crock pot that did come apart and pretend it was hers.

But, in the end, I bit the bullet. I needed to learn to admit I wasn't always right. Besides, he was at the computer, and there was a chance he might not notice.

As I stood behind him, watching the ogre's approach, I said magnanimously, "You were right and I was wrong about the crockpot, Honey." His character leaped out of the way of the lunging ogre, as he hastily replied, "That's nice."

So, I did tell him. It was a learning experience for me and I felt very good about admitting that, though usually right, I had been wrong just this once.

Owlet

Photo of a baby owl taken by my son at family cabin near La Veta, CO

The description of sighting this owlet is under Comment 1, because it was my first post and I hadn't quite figured out how it worked at that point.