Birds in my fireplace

Early this morning I was awoken (much too early) by the words, "Sweetie!!! There's cat vomit on the floor and birds in the fireplace!" Whuh? Sure enough, that was the situation. 2 little birds had managed to come down through the chimney and into our fireplace. Lucky for them, the screen trapped them safely away from the cats.

We locked the dog and the cats outside the back door and propped the front door open. Our house is very small so we figured that once we let the birds out of the fireplace, they would fly around for a minute and find the way out.

Unfortunately, they seemed convinced that the little windows above the fireplace were their escape path. They flew straight into it. Once they were convinced that there was no getting through it, they just perched on window sills. It was at this point that John asked if I was just going to leave the cat vomit on the floor. "I am so not concerned about the cat vomit right now."

Finally, one of them flew to a window that actually is able to open. Amazingly, the bird sat on that window sill while John opened the screen and the bird flew out. With a little encouragement from us, the other bird followed.

The floor is cleaned up now as well.

Let there be light! (and a cool breeze)

9 Months ago, after much obsessing over styles, sizes, and functionality, we bought a lovely ceiling fan to replace the hideous and enormous royal blue ceiling fan that came with our kitchen. The new fan has lived in a box in our dining room (also known as the storage closet) this entire time. We removed and sold the blue fan as soon as the new one arrived, thinking that we'd install it right away.


Getting around in the kitchen at night has been an interesting challenge. Oh well, there's always the little lights over the stove and sink. I am so very happy to report that our beautiful ceiling fan is now installed and working. All I have to do is flip a little switch and *poof!* the light goes on. You know, like normal people do.



Getting that one box out of the dining room also inspired us to organize all the rest of the junk that was being stored in there. Maybe in another 9 months we'll actually have some furniture. "Dining room" - before and after: