Well, we decided to name the parakeet "Buckbeak" after the animal in the Harry Potter story. He certainly is a very strong flyer! His wings are clipped but he doesn't seem to know it, and he can cross the room with no difficulty. All in all he is a sweet, tame, alert bird and The Hub and I are already very attached to him.

We located a working radio in the wreck that is our house ( because we are cleaning out the office and trying to only have work things in there - thus nothing in the house is where it belongs with the execption of the laundry, which was it's whole own project)....

and tuned it to the local public radio station for Buckbeak when we are out of the house. I have learned that, when it is quiet, parakeets think that means there is a predator nearby and so it really stresses them out. I'm not sure that the sound of the dog snoring would be comforting to him, thus he heard a great deal more of the news than I did today.

The challenges unique to my line of work were everywhere today! I showed up at Mr. T.D.'s to find the place looking a little like a crime scene. Mr. T.D. has diabetes and he had a cut open without realizing it until he looked down and saw that he was trailing blood. The cut is not serious in and of itself, although, of course it must be watched. The CNA came while I was there and had a look at it and discussed it with him. But Mrs. T.D. thought that the carpet in their place might be a lost cause.

I went to work on it slowly and carefully with hydrogen peroxide. There is no fast way to get blood out of a carpet. You put the hydrogen peroxide on the spot, wait for it to fizz and then you scrub the be-jeezus out of it. Then you move on to the next spot. This took the entire morning, but it was worth it because Mrs. T.D. was thrilled.

I stopped home and made myself some rice for lunch, talked to Buckbeak awhile, and cleaned our bathroom. While I was at it, I decided to use one of those "Healthy Shot" facial masks from mark/Avon - the one that dries on your face a bright green color. I am told that dogs don't perceive color, but Winston looked mighty astonished when he walked past the bathroom and saw me cleaning the sink with a green face and yelling "hello! hello! hello!" into the office at the top of my lungs in an effort to make the bird feel more comfortable.

Then it was on to Island Girl's where, for once, the toilet did not back up. The crisis there was a salad dressing explosion in the fridge, which lead to a searching and fearless inventory of all the stuff that was in there....and had been in there for quite some time. It took awhile but I overcame the new life ( and, in some cases, possibly new civilization) that was teeming in the fridge. I re-screwed in the thing that was making a wierd noise in their dishwasher and took a call from Island Girl's husband while I was doing this.

"I'm so sorry about that refigerator" he said. I could tell he was embarrassed. "I've been meaning to get to it and I just didn't have time."

"Don't worry about it! You can't be everywhere at once." I answered. After all, it isn't as if I'd never seen moldy food before - hell, I worked in offices for years!

"Listen, don't mention this to Island Girl but I've -" here he was interupted by a cry of dismay from his wife . I bolted up ( from laying down looking upward into the dishwasher) terrified that Island Girl at hurt herself but she was merely looking into the fridge with an expression of deep disgust. Had I missed something in there? She hadn't batted an eye at the bio hazards that had come out of the thing and by now it was clean! " - got some tripe in a bag in there." he finished.

"Never mind. I think she found it." I said.

"Oh, for God's sake! This is a cow's stomach!! Oh, I hate it when he brings this stuff home!" Island Girl was saying. "Oh, Tea, can't we put the green beans over it or something?! I don't want to have to look at it again! Bleach!"

"She doesn't like it" Sir Salesman was saying on the phone.

"Yeah, I'm getting that impression." I answered.

After we hung up I started the dishwasher and gave the offending cow insides a decent burial underneath a bag of carrots and a green bean cassarole, but Island Girl still says she won't eat anything but mac and cheese ( out of the box) or tuna ( out of a can) until the tripe is out of there.

Which just goes to show that no matter how hard you work you can't please everybody!