tiny ducks and brain-dead boy-teens and psychos

Well!  What an interesting few days it's been.  I could easily write separate posts about each of these events, but the way they've been running one right into another calls for one longish post.  Consider yourself warned.

It started off on Friday when the hubby received a call from one of the tenants saying that there were a bunch of ducklings following everybody around outside.  We had known that there was a nest there and that it would be full of little ducks soon, but for some reason the mother was nowhere to be found and the six little fuzzy chirping babies wanted to be led to food!  They followed people into their garages, up hills, around driveways - it was so dang cute!  But we also knew it wasn't safe for them.  As the neighbors gathered, it was decided we'd call the people over at Fellow Mortals, an amazing non-profit wildlife hospital in the next town over, to see what they recommended.  While we waited to hear back from them, we thought we'd better gather them up and thought maybe if we left them by their nest, the mom would come back.  You know, like those starlings last year.  We grabbed a big plastic bin and gently placed them inside.  We shortly got a call back from Fellow Mortals and they said that it's not right for the mother to be absent like that after her babies have hatched and to bring them in to their facility in the morning.  Our only other question was do we leave them outside or is it too cold?  Too cold!  So I brought the bin of tiny ducks into our apartment where they spent the night.

Rub-a-dub-dub, six ducks in a tub

I got up on Saturday morning, went to work for a few hours (more weekend joy) and then went home to collect the bin and the babies and take them to the facility.  They apparently fall asleep on car rides just like baby humans.  When I got there, they took them right in the back and checked them out.  They looked pretty healthy, but because they didn't know if maybe the mom ate something poisonous and fed it to them, they were going to keep a close eye on them for a while.  Turns out they were about three days old (therefore hatched on our kid's birthday) and were about a month behind normal egg-laying schedule.  They would have to be housed there probably until next spring when they could safely be released back into the wild.  Wow - this place is amazing!  (Seriously, if you want to give to a worth-while charity, please give to this one.  Follow the link above and click on "Donate". You can even say it's in the name of the ducklings admitted on 8/3/13.)

Napping in the car

  

So, with the little duckies taken care of, it was time to head home and mentally prep for my son's birthday party - a sleepover and trip to a local waterpark.  With a group of 4 or 5 thirteen-year-old boys.  Give me strength!!

There was an interesting phenomenon that I saw though that I'd never seen before at one of his birthday parties, and I've shared this with a couple of friends already, so excuse the repetition, but it baffles me.  Apparently when one-on-one with a thirteen-year-old boy, he comprehends what you're saying, follows directions (to a point), is a normal human being, but put him in a group of kids who are the same age and all of that disappears.  They become easily distracted, don't finish sentences or thoughts, start doing something like heading to the locker room to change, but instead stop after one step and try to whack each other with towels...for five minutes...before we had to start leading them to the locker room physically.  It was like we had never said anything at all.  I knew this day would come eventually, but I was hoping it would wait until he hit high school, and my hope of it ending around 18 was squashed by the hubby telling me it lasted until at least 40.   (Still glad I had a boy though)

We eventually got them to a place where they could change and went back to our place for a  sleepover.  Pizza, Doritos, Combos, soda and video games.  They were pretty content and the hubster and I went to bed at 11:30, leaving the dogs to make sure they didn't tear up the place.  The dogs did well.  Everyone survived and we sent them home in the morning.  Success! 

Sunday was a day of recuperation for everyone (booze and naps!), but today became interesting.  The hubby was accosted by some psycho ex-boyfriend of another one of our tenants.  Apparently this guy thinks that she's such a winner that every man who has ever talked to her (my husband included) is obviously boning her and must be dealt with. Even though he's not with her anymore and hasn't been for quite some time (gee, I wonder why). Can we say loony?  He threatened him, threatened to f*ck up his family (meaning us), blah blah blah, and drove off. 

Well that's awesome!

      

Now I get to make sure I carry my phone with me at all times and watch out for his car and keep the doors locked, but of course I'll do all of this without being paranoid because I'm freaking Wonder Woman, dammit!

So, yeah.  That's things here.  How have you been?