A rabbit's literary tastes

It's finally occured to me that I have a live-in solution to my book overcrowding issues; what I've heretofore seen as a necessary nuisance of having two free-roaming rabbits might be better viewed as an opportunity to discover the unknown literary tastes of rabbits. Or I could just continue to make available those books I no longer have a use for as a substitute for fresh (and expensive) timothy hay. Anything on the bottom shelf and within reach is fair game for their *reading* pleasure. Recycling in its simplest form!

Book or newspaper eating is far from unheard of with rabbits. Their teeth are open-rooted and grow continuously, hence their need for chewables. I buy them willow and apple sticks and give them bits of wood to chew to save the baseboards, but their preference is for my wicker porch furniture and those books stored down low.

I amuse myself with pondering their choices. For most of the winter they worked on a favorite book by illustrator Marjolein Bastin - a hardcover book, I can imagine the satisfaction of sinking one's teeth into it. Every morning there was less of it for me to replace on the shelf. By winter's end the cover and binding were gone; their interest in the loose pages has waned and this week they've found a new favorite by John Irving. Unfortunately it's one I haven't read yet.

I'm thinking I should replace that one and some of the others on the bottom shelf with something more bunny-appropriate and worthy of recycling:

A Taste For Rabbit

Disapproving Rabbits

Rabbit Language or "Are You Going to Eat That?"

Strange Curves, Counting Rabbits, & Other Mathematical Explorations

Rabbit Stew

Raising Rabbits For Fur, Meat And Profit

Any other suggestions for books a rabbit might love to eat?

;-)

Let it be

Is it possible to will away poison ivy, do you think? Ignore it away, maybe? I've been trying to not see the funny little blisters that are replacing the sunburn on my arms and shoulders from a morning at the beach last weekend. First I thought they were blisters from too much sun on my winter-white skin. Then they started to itch a bit and I decided them bug bites. But I know better, I think.

I forget that I can't be so cavalier in my approach to poison ivy anymore. Getting it once should have been a good lesson, but the sun and a warmish breeze off the bay at Sandy Hook conspired to make me absentminded. I was more concerned with scratching up my bare legs among the beach plums, apparently, than minding what the rest of me touched. Foolish with spring-fever, I'll pay the price by itching until Memorial Day.

I got poison ivy for the first time only about five years ago. It was the end of the school year and I was teaching high school at the time. My classroom that year was a *modular* one (makeshift would be a better word) - school construction had a number of classrooms relocated to the gym. There were walls to separate each classroom from the next, but no doors and no proper ceilings. You can imagine the fun a group of freshman boys might have with that set-up. I always knew if there was a substitute teacher in one of the adjoining classrooms because all manner of things would come flying over the walls, hitting my angelic students on the head while they toiled over their Spanish textbooks. Great fun. At any rate, there was no air conditioning in the gym, of course, and poor poison-ivy covered me couldn't hide my calamine-lotioned skin under long sleeves or pants for fear of fainting in the heat at the end of June. School ended and I went off to celebrate in the Adirondacks and was eaten alive by black flies on top of my poison ivy. Talk about misery!

Poison ivy is impossible to avoid at Sandy Hook - it grows in great impenetrable thickets - and this time of year it's not looking nearly so pretty or obvious as in this pic from May of last year. There was nothing but branches with just a hint of leaves... how dangerous is that?

;-)

Don't tell me. I'm pretending not to notice, remember?

Branching out

Late April in NJ is when one might expect young GH Owls to begin exploring outside the confines of their nests. They're not yet able to fly, but are too big to sit still in their nests so begin to *branch* in nearby trees and test their wings until their flight feathers come in. This one was found tonight on someone's deck and the smart people who found it called the police. (Wouldn't have been my first call, but whatever!)

The DH picked it up (and got footed for his trouble), took it off to a local vet to be sure it was okay, stopped home to pick up the photographer (me!) and it was back in this birch close to its nest tree within an hour or so.

Have a look at those feet!

This firefighter wears pink

Tonight I just want to share this pic of my friend's daughter... yes that's a (gasp!) girl under all that firefighting gear - as if the pink nomex hood isn't a dead giveaway!

Of course, she's been teased mercilessly for this pic, but the root of the teasing is about more than her fashionable turn-out gear. Rumor has it that the guys in her company won't allow her to drive the firetruck because she's a (gasp!) girl. Okay for her to go into burning houses, though. Harrumph, I say! (Well... not just that, but I'll leave it alone.)

Full story and more pics here.

Getting away

Here's one that wouldn't sit still long enough for a photo.

;-)

In the on-going saga of our bathroom remodel, we've reached the point where we (I) needed to get away... the tile for the tub and floor is down, but we can't use either, so we've packed up the dog to some hole-in-the-wall-hotel for the night. I'm not sure that Luka meets the requirements of a "well-behaved pet" exactly, but that'll be our little secret.

;-)

I'm just hoping he won't destroy anything in the middle of the night.

Useless bird photography tips

Tip #1: If you find yourself lacking in either good equipment, skill or interesting and flamboyant birds to photograph, it always helps to take pics of birds in places one isn't used to seeing them. This will make up for your lack of skill, somewhat. Maybe. Probably not.

Example #1: Robins belong on grassy lawns or in muddy nests, not sandy beaches. The odd habitat distracts the viewer from the less than stellar exposure and the soft focus from your long lens that is sooo darn slow.

Example #2: Eastern towhees should be skulking on the ground in leaf-strewn forests or scratching around beneath blooming beach plum bushes or in poison ivy tangles. They are almost never seen perched in trees. This from-below view is interesting for its novelty and may keep the viewer from noticing the poor composition and soft focus of your photo.

Coming soon: Tips for taking pics of any bird that sits still long enough!

Big bunny fix

I've no idea just what they do in England to grow their bunnies so huge, but this guy looks about the size of my Boomer. An armload, for sure! For more super-huge bunnies, click here.

Trinkets

Susan sent a surprise my way yesterday and added a bit of joy to an already beautiful spring day. Thanks Susan!

Position available

Wildflower Enthusiast:
There is a temporary need for a part-time wildflower instructor willing to traipse around in the woods and point out and identify pretty flowers. Availability primarily on weekends and late afternoons during the Spring season. May also be needed for summer day trips to the NJ Pine Barrens.

Must be able to discern weeds from wildflowers and recognize garden escapees. Infinite patience with the beginner is desirable. Resistance to poison ivy helpful. Must not be deterred by wet feet, muddy knees or mosquitos. Love of rock-eating black labs might prove useful, as would a good sense of humor.

There is no salary; good company is the only thing on offer. Possibility of barter is negotiable. To trade: above-average knowledge of birdsong, organic homemade rabbit fertilizer (by the ton), best local pizza, free-range mixed baby koi/goldfish, familiarity with essential inferior poetry.

To apply, simply state the name of the flower pictured herewith. Serious inquiries only, please.

Scents and memories

My mother had one of those mirrored trays with crystal perfume bottles that she kept on her dresser... very shiny and fancy and exactly the type of thing we kids were never supposed to touch. After she passed away my dad tried giving it to me, to put on my little girl's dresser, and I remember throwing a crying fit because I was so afraid to have it for myself. Imagine if I ever dropped one of those gorgeous bottles of perfume!

Eventually I convinced myself to take it from my mom's dresser and put it in my own room. It never quite fit with the pink canopy bed and I still haven't gotten over the ambivalence I felt about that damn perfume tray. It's probably in storage somewhere or up in the attic. I don't dare throw it away, but I don't want to have to look at it everyday, either. Silly how an object can be tied up with so much emotional baggage more than 25 years later. I guess maybe I feel like I still haven't grown up enough to use anything so... elegant, so classy, so like my mom.

Part of my ambivalence might also be associated with the particular perfume my mom liked. I don't necessarily remember her wearing it - I can't remember the sound of her voice, never mind what she smelled like - but I do remember the scent in those bottles.. Chanel No. 5. Overbearing, flowery, full of vanilla ... ick. The perfume itself had probably gone over years before and that made it even more awful-smelling and heady.

I've never been one for perfume anyway (any wonder why?!) but many years ago I was given the tiniest bottle of the most perfect scent - bergamot and jonquil, jasmine and mandarin... in an understated black rectangular bottle. Perfect. That little bottle went quickly and I spent years trying to find more of it. Turns out it was discontinued. It reappeared a couple years ago at a ridiculous price and I'd refused to buy it. Until today. Today I spoiled myself and bought the big bottle.

I don't do it often, but it feels nice to be spoiled once in a while! And having that scent on my wrist again makes me smile and feel happy. Happy except that it reminded me of my mom's perfume tray collecting dust somewhere.

;-)

So... any favorite perfumes out there? Any that you love to hate? I'm hoping none of you are big Chanel No. 5 fans.

Please note: Someday this will return to something resembling a nature blog. I feel like I've been "off-topic" a lot lately!

Got rocks?

One by one he's determined to remove every last rock from his personal wading pool (a.k.a. our little backyard pond). There's no interest in the dry rocks on the shore; he prefers instead to snorkel for the choicest rock.


He runs around with it in his mouth like a prize, tail high in the air, before settling down for a good chew. (Yes, he eats rocks.)


He might even roll on his back some with it. Thank heavens he hasn't discovered the joy of burying stuff yet! As it is, the DH's patience is running thin.


Makes Luka pretty happy, though. I think he's pleased to amuse and entertain us. (Well... me anyway.)


This is the fresh face I get should I be silly enough to reprimand him between fits of laughter. Have I mentioned lately how nutty this dog is?

Spring in my garden

The season of yellow is quickly giving over to the season of blues, pinks and whites. The neighbors are welcome to their garish forsythia; I'd rather wait for these in my garden:

Virginia Bluebells

Serviceberry

Meadow Sage

Quince (slightly garish, yes, but gorgeous anyway!)

So... what's blooming your way this weekend? Still stuck with all that yellow?

;-)

Bayside

Today was the type of Spring day I wait for... perfectly warm, a Friday, payday... and a chance to sneak off work early and hit the beach for a couple hours...


Because it's nesting season for beach birds, Luka could only run on the bay side of Sandy Hook, but run he did! He swam some, too, and came across a couple mating horseshoe crabs floating in the flooded marsh. I guess this is the first full moon of the spring and the tide was very high, and well, the horseshoe crabs were doing their thing. Nice to see. I don't know what it is about dogs and horseshoe crabs, but Luka barked and growled and was afraid like every other dog I've ever had.


He was in his element there, in the marsh, tasting the prickly pear cactus and chewing sticks after I tossed them into the water for him. He really wants to be a bird dog, I think, and he certainly looks the part, finally, when he's in the water.


I had to hold him by the collar for a pic of us two... he was sopping wet at this point and had just run off with two complete strangers... such a friendly dog; I think he'd wander along with anyone so long as it looked like they were about to do something fun.


Speaking of fun... a girl after my own heart... searching a tidal pool for hermit crabs. Look at those wellies! She was careful to warn me not to be fooled by snails.


One of my favorite sunset views... the osprey platform in the far distance is occupied, as is usual, but the residents went off fishing soon after I arrived. Some brant are still around, but the calls of oystercatchers have replaced those of oldsquaw echoing across the bay. I found towhees in the holly forest, but no willets overhead, yet. It's not properly Spring without the call of the willet.

Poem in your Pocket Day

A favorite from Ted Kooser:

The Bluet

Of all the flowers, the bluet has
the sweetest name, two syllables
that form on the lips, then fall
with a tiny, raindrop splash
into a suddenly bluer morning.

I offer you mornings like that,
fragrant tiny blue blossoms--
each with four petals, each with a star
at its heart. I would give you whole fields
of wild perfume if only

you could be mine, if you were not--
like the foolish bluet (also called
Innocence) - always holding your face
to the fickle, careless, fly by kiss
of the Clouded Sulphur Butterfly.

Bluet image from Hilton Pond

First looks

Patrick invited us to share a bit about the first pair of binoculars that we used for birding. Unlike Patrick, I came to birding kinda late in life, when I was in my mid-twenties, and bought a pair of Kowa's at the nature center where I would end up volunteering a few weeks later.

They were cheap and pretty awful, but nothing as bad as what I see some people trying to learn birds with. I used them for a couple years until I was able to appreciate the difference between a $100 pair of binoculars and a $1000 pair of binoculars. I saved up for the Zeiss 7X42's I use now and still keep those old Kowa's on the counter to grab when I see something interesting out the kitchen window. They're always dusty, but I still see nice birds with them once in a while.

Now I'm trying to remember what my first bird was with the new Zeiss'... I think it may have been a prothonotary on the first day of the spring weekend in Cape May in 98 or 99.

Wild flowers in the lawn

The frustrated wildflower photographer (me) roamed around the garden this weekend looking for flowers. There was nothing new in the woods, so I settled for what I could find in the less well-kept corners of the yard. You might think of these as weeds, but it's really a matter of perspective...

The bunnies were treated to their first dandy-lion adorned salads of the season!
A bunch or two of grape hyacinths pop up in random parts of the lawn every spring and remind me of my mother who had them planted in a little bed with lily-of-the-valley.


I'm not really certain what this is, but think it may be bittercress? It's blooming everywhere and must taste nice to someone.


The tiniest of yellow flowers, no bigger than the nail on my pinky finger, oxalis maybe, and nectar for a very tiny critter.


Purple violets, well before May Day, something else the bunnies like on their salads.

A couple years ago when my work schedule was flexible, I completed the classes and required volunteer hours to become a Master Gardener. If I remember correctly, I had to take 3 months of classes and *give back* 60 hours of volunteer work that first year. An awful lot of class time was spent learning things that I found pretty distasteful; mainly what sorts of herbicides would work to control broadleaf weeds like these in a manicured lawn. I've spent an even greater amount of hours pulling these weeds, and the summer weeds, and the fall weeds, and the winter weeds in the county parks where I do the majority of my volunteer hours these days.

The weeds always win. There's always more of them. Why not find a way to enjoy them?

Count the fishies

The first summer we put in our pond we were pretty conservative with the number of fish we provided for. I think we started with less than twenty and I worried that even that small number was too much for our 1100 gallons. There was, of course, some formula involving the number of gallons divided by the 'inches of fish' that confounded me, as does most math, so we sort of ignored it and hoped that we didn't have too many fish to overload the filtration system.

Pond books also had me scared to death to actually feed them very much food. I had the idea that if I fed them too much, the pond would quickly go green and the goldfish would grow to monstrous proportions in just one season. So I fed them once a day, if I remembered.

However many years out now... 6 or 7 since we put it in... I've decided that most of what I read in books is baloney. Maybe you have to worry about all that crap if you have a really small pond and man-eating koi, or if you think of a garden pond in terms of an indoor tropical aquarium, or have no means of filtering it, but I've found that it takes care of itself pretty well so long as I just leave it alone!

And the fish, well, they're taking pretty good care of themselves too and multiplying. We added three small koi two summers ago and they seem to really like it here. They've certainly added some color to the mix of babies. Somehow the twenty or so survivors that we started with last spring have turned into...

Well, I'll let you guess. You can try counting them in the pic, but like those count-the-jelly-beans-in-the-jar contests, it's much more fun to just eyeball it and make a guess.

The person who guesses with the closest number wins all of this season's babies!

;-)

Note: I've finally added a category in the sidebar for pond posts, so if you should ever be in the mood for reading more, go there.

Another Luka story without words

This one tells itself, but I wonder if you can guess just how long the telling took:

And yes, the new football not only has lost all its air, but is in tatters now.

Labs!

I fell in love today...

Anything else like this wouldn't ordinarily garner a second glance from me... yellow... not my type. Not my type at all.

But there was something to this yellow that caused me to turn my head and then captured me. A clear pure yellow on dainty pointed petals that completely stole my heart.

The shape to the leaves called to mind something familiar, some other love that I might've already met. Tumbling down a little hillside of dappled sun as it was, I was smitten, but can't come up with a name. Anyone know this handsome little flower?

For Mary

What you can't see is that the lady's holding a tiny cup of sweet nectar in the palm of her hand... an idea for you Mary, now that your hummers have found their way back to you.

In which I foresee the future and rant some

Today was a beautiful day, so beautiful and warm for the first time that it was hard to stay inside at work for so many hours.

Spring fever got the best of me this evening and I skipped the gym (again!) and wandered around the garden instead to encourage the bluebells and bleeding hearts in their progress towards blooming. I checked in with the fish in their temporary home until the pond is cleaned (soon!) and tried to find a frog or two hidden amongst the muck at the bottom. Once it started to get dark, I walked the farm fields in back hoping for woodcock. No luck; it's too late and I missed my chance for the year. I knew it was all wrong when I heard only robins caroling and no white-throated sparrows. Usually, I know to expect the peenting to begin once the white-throats have quieted down for the night. The robins are singing at dusk and the woodcock have moved on.

In short, it was another of those days that left with me nothing much to blog about. Around 9 pm I finally got to open the mail and found my topic for the day: my impending poverty.

;-)

My birthday's coming up in a couple months and as you working people know, Social Security sends out an estimated benefits statement each year. Mostly I don't pay much mind to it because the idea of retirement is so far off for me now that it feels like a waste of time to even contemplate it. But I spent some time looking at those numbers tonight and am sort of sorry I did.

The bad news is that if I continue to work two jobs until I'm 62 (another 25 years or so) I'll have earned enough to qualify myself for a whopping $576 in monthly benefits. $576 a month is way below the federal poverty level, you know.

Worse is that if I continue to work two jobs for another 30 years, I'll still qualify for benefits that keep me below the federal poverty level, but which are too high to entitle me to food stamps or any other sort of government assistance.

Worse still is that if I continue to work two jobs for another 33 years (until I'm 70 for christsakes!) I'll barely qualify for enough to keep me out of the poorhouse.

Does anyone else find this terribly depressing?

Can anyone wonder why I try to be so kind to my poor downtrodden clients? I'll be one of them someday!

;-)

Granted, I've not made lucrative career choices and don't believe it's up to the government to support me in my old age, but jeez! Where's the motivation to go to work on a sunny spring day?

The truth of the matter is that I can also expect a pension as a public employee, assuming the other taxpayers in my fine state don't whittle that away to nothing by the time I'm old and gray. 'Taxpayers' seem to think that we public employees, your teachers and public health nurses and garbage men, and even us dopey social workers, have too many perks and earn too much and shouldn't also earn a nice pension for our old age. The truth is in those numbers though... I earn so little as a public employee that, were it not for that anticipated pension, I'd be going to work everyday for the rest of eternity only to set myself up to be poor in the future.

I'm thinking of leaving it all behind... running off to join the circus or finding a band that needs a groupie or setting up a lemonade stand on some deserted beach in the Bahamas; anything to avoid the seeming drudgery of working everyday for nothing.

Maybe I should just find a really good financial advisor instead.

Meet the new neighbors

I'm using the word 'neighbor' very broadly, of course, but these two eaglets set a state record, so I'm allowed to be proud! Their nest is very easily viewed and is conveniently located at one of the nicest county parks in my area.

This nest is one of 3 or 4 in my county; another is within a mile or two of home, but the exact location of that nest is a well-guarded secret. I don't have bald eagle on my yard list, yet, but someday soon I'm sure I will.

Photo from the Asbury Park Press. Full story available here.

Spring pitch

It's time for me to pitch the Cape May Spring Weekend to any of you that might be interested in the chance to see Cape May and its birds in the Spring. I know Susan is pushing hard for the flock to head to Magee Marsh and she's promising foot rubs, but Ohio's the weekend before and why not make a week of it and stop by NJ on the way home?

;-)

Click on the link above for details. The spring weekend has an entirely different feel than the fall (and hopefully it won't rain the whole time again!) and is worth the trip, if for nothing else than the diminishing spectacle of shorebird migration along Delaware Bay. They're also offering those wonderful back bay cruises that were cancelled for the fall festival.


I haven't been down in the spring for a few years and it makes me sad to know that my memories of stopover shorebirds are history, even now.

Anyway... anybody want to think about it?

Overheard at the bird observatory

An egg story to rival Delia's:

"Hello? Is this the Audubon?"

You can assume this means trouble at 10 am on a Sunday morning.

"We had a bunch of dead trees cut down in our yard..."

Uh oh. Why don't people know enough to do this in the Fall?

"and my husband was cleaning up the stump grindings and found this egg..."

Oh dear.

"buried about four inches down in the dirt."

Huh?

"It's huge! And I know it's an owl egg because my neighbor is one of those people that's into all that nature stuff and she looked it up on the Internet and she says that owls burrow down, you know, to make their nests and..."

The bird observatory is located in NJ. The person was calling from NJ.

"and the egg must weigh at least a pound and I think it's still alive so I put it in a basket.."

Wasn't Easter a couple weeks ago already?

"and filled the basket up with dirt and buried the egg again and it's been out on my deck for the last couple days.."

In the sun, I hope.

"and I'm not sure what I should do because I think it's alive and it's so heavy and could I bring it to you and you'll tell me what it is and maybe take care of it or whatever?"

Sure... bring it on over. We'll sit on it and hatch it for you.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How do you think I handled this particular phone call? With patience? Did I cackle in this woman's ear or take the rare opportunity to educate?

No. I asked her if she was certain it wasn't just a really big rock.

Or a dinosaur egg, maybe.

Comfort foods

When I was a kid, one of my most favorite things to eat was Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in the dark blue box. You cooked the macaroni, added some milk and margarine and the little packet of powdered 'cheese'and voila! Add a little salt and lots of pepper and it was delicious. (Still is, if I'm being honest.) My dad never wanted to believe that I loved the stuff so much, I mean... it only cost 49 cents for the whole box! He tried to convince me that the more expensive box, the 'creamier' version with the little package of cheez-whiz-like-stuff, must be better. I'd have none of it.

There's probably nothing better than homemade mac and cheese, and the way my mom made it was delicicous, but dad could never quite master the recipe, for whatever reason. So I guess that's partly why I liked the stuff in the box so well. Dad would try to dress it up with hot dogs or canned tomatoes, to make it seem more like something 'worth' eating, but no amount of improvisation beat the stuff straight out of the box for me.

Well! I found a recipe that I love. It's simple enough, but grown up with Gruyere cheese and extra-sharp cheddar, nearly a pound of cheese, and a quart of whole milk. Yummy! I add some vine-ripened tomatoes on top with fresh bread crumbs and it's sinfully delicious, but certainly not low-fat. But, who cares, right? Comfort food, pure and simple. Plus, the recipe makes enough for a week's worth of lunches.

Any favorites from your childhood? SpaghettiOs? Cinnamon toast? Hamburger Helper? Have you managed to improve upon them as a grown-up?

;-)

A Jersey Girl manifesto

OK. So... Susan's making fun of me. I'll own up to my deep dark secret. I don't know know how to pump gas.

Do you still like me anyway?

I tried to think of something I could make fun of Susan for. Couldn't think of anything. Couldn't find a single thing online, even, to make fun of her for or anything about that place in the middle of nowhere that she's from. That says something, I think. There's lots written about NJ and lots written about Jersey Girls. Making fun of us is a hot topic, almost. Bruce Springsteen wrote a song about us, even. You don't hear anyone singing songs about Mid-Western girls. So there.

Anyway, I spent a couple hours with my tongue in my cheek and came up with this, excerpted from a dozen different sources and meant to make you wish you were me, or at least, wish you were from NJ.

I was born and raised in NJ and while I often feel very damaged by this, I’m still pretty proud of it. I know what real pizza tastes like, and I know that a bagel is much more than a roll with a hole in the middle. I judge people by what exit they get off the Parkway. I can navigate a traffic circle--with attitude. I know that 65 mph really means 80. When someone cuts me off, they get the horn AND the finger. And they expect it. It's a sub, not a hoagie or, worse yet, a hero, and I wash it down with soda, not pop. Yes, I drink cawfee, and lots of it. I've always lived within 10 minutes of a mall.

In NJ, I can watch the sun rise on the east coast and watch it set on the west. I can climb a mountain in the morning, swim in the ocean in the afternoon, and get robbed at gunpoint in Camden by night. It's the only state where massive oil refineries and dairy farms are just a few miles apart.

Where I’m from... the shore... makeup, shoes and bras are optional, salty hair and sand under the fingernails a given, a strong attitude and a tough mouth a plus. I say what I mean and I’ve got a nice, cheerful laugh. I’m a Jersey Girl, and I’m one of the Garden State's most enduring icons- a readily identifiable personality, as much a part of America's cultural landscape as that other great Jerseyan, Frank Sinatra. I’m spunky and witty. I’ve got confidence- everyone from New Jersey has that confidence. A Jersey Girl is crunchy on the outside, and soft in the center. At the center of the crunchy sweet exterior, I’m tuned in and know how and what I’m working.

The Jersey Girl mystique is hard to put into words. One would never say earthy-that's way too California. Gritty gets closer when you understand that a true Jersey Girl sleeps just fine with sand in the bed. Jersey Girls go to the beach, or "down the Shore" They're not formal. We know good corn and tomatoes when we taste them, and we never pump our own gas!!!

So there.

;-)

Is there anything people from your part of the blogosphere are known for or made fun of for? Big hair or a bad accent or ?