Two days away from my usual spot and it was a squirrel war on my previously-rodent-free birdfeeder. And they are emphatically copycats: if one does it, each one in the vicinity has to try, just like little kids: Well, but HE got to, so why can’t *I*?

Yo? Did you see your littermate hit the ground running from up there when I opened the door? It couldn’t have been fun.

So today one was keeping an eye on me, judging to see if I might walk away out of sight so it could have a go at that awning pole and then go leaping across to the food from there. Like I didn’t know exactly what it was thinking–I’ve seen them do a “Mother May I” game, running a few feet forward if I turn my head away, freezing if I turn back to see.   They charm me so, the little toddlers.

What he didn’t realize was the neighbor’s cat was watching him intently from halfway across the grass. Not stalking him; more like it was watching the wing-and-foot show and noting where future snackage was to be found should the need arise.

I opened the door and squirrel, birds, and cat fled to safety.

Those black squirrels’ preoccupation with me and that feeder was Darwinizing them.  I took some aluminum foil. I taped a short length of it to the pole opposite the feeder–nothing harmful in any way, but nothing for agile little feet to pitch their in-tent from either.

Went off to church. Came home to find crinkled foil, still holding–someone must have tried from below–and a little black squirrel sitting among my amaryllises on the picnic table, staring longingly up, wondering if maybe, just maybe, he could make the leap from over that-a-way.  All that lovely, lovely millet and sunflower seeds.

Not a chance. (So far.)

La Restaurante des Oiseaux tends to get its heaviest feather-and-foot traffic at breakfast, lunch, and dinner-type intervals. Curious, that.

And so it was during a quiet time of no activity there that my childrens’ birdfeeder started swaying ever so gently back and forth. Nothing was nor had been on it.  Huh.  I glanced over at the other; same thing, very rhythmic, the two doing a slow dance in perfect tandem.

And yet the leaves on the trees were still. No breeze there.

I’ll just bet you, I thought.  I gave them a little time to record it, then checked the time at the USGS site a little later.  A baby quake, epicenter right about here, not enough heft to it to feel for anyone over the size of perhaps a chickadee.

(Hey, Illinois: yours today was conjectured to have been caused by the earth being relieved of the weight of the ice age, according to this article.  Quick!  Tell Washington, DC to stop shoveling, now, or they’re in for it!)

Got your batteries in and ears on?  Okay, here goes:

1. Finished the Manos shawl.

2. The chickadees supervised the process.

3. The squirrel:  Scarlet-o-hairy made me burst out laughing.  Reddy, though, short for Redwood or all kinds of possibilities, has stuck with me all day. So far. (Rodent is an anagram for Redont chew near the house.)

4. Now I have to go design something to live up to today’s mail delivery: Dianne does nice work.  One feels, knitting her calypso-dyeways yarns, like one is assembling a Claude Monet (and as the daughter of an art dealer who worked with one of Monet’s proteges, I get to say that insufferably smugly.)

It always feels wonderful to buy from the kind of person a fellow knitter can hold up as, this, this: is what knitters are like.  Kind, creative, artistic and generous, with a loyal following for good reason.  I can’t wait to see Dianne at Stitches next month!  (Saving my pennies for that amaryllis yarn that I didn’t even see till after my order had gone through. I mean, how perfect is that.  And the. And the. And the. And the.)

I thought I knew just what I was going to do with this Temptation CoCo when it got here so I could dive immediately in. But sometimes, colorways, once they’re present in person, design themselves just right and just so. If we listen.

I’ve got my ears in.

I tend to chase off the gray squirrels when they’re acting dominant towards the others.  Hey. This is my patio and my birdseed I’m sharing. Play nice or git, and stay off my amaryllis table! There are rules here!

So the two grays I tend to see have just enough of a healthy fear of people, rare for city squirrels around here, instilled by me.  Although I’ve laughed a couple of times at one when he’s looked, considered the threat, and then turned his back, as long as I’m still safely inside and away, as if to say, If I can’t see you I can’t be afraid of you.  So there.

It is so utterly human a gesture in such a small animal, this obstinate refusal to acknowledge what it doesn’t want to see if it doesn’t have to, that it makes me laugh each time it does it.

Or maybe it’s just on to me.  I AM safe for him to be around.

But it also means I can open the door and he will all-out head for the hills looking guilty– while the one black one, now, when I open the door, stays. Trembling, slightly, sometimes, as the slider widens, hoping hard, semi-sure of what is to come.

I spotted my favorite this morning. (I have got to give it a name!) It was up in a tree, watching.  I opened the door and held a large walnut piece up in the air.

That little thing scrambled down that tree and ran to the patio at a speed I’ve only ever before seen in a squirrel when it’s having a panic attack. Maybe it didn’t want the others to beat it over to me? The others must have thought it was nuts.

It has picked up quickly on what I want out of it and is completely willing to comply: do not cross this line between concrete sections to come closer to the house.  You stay on your side. (I don’t need rodents chewing on my siding, trying to get in, no matter how cute they are like this one is.)

Next thing you know it’ll be trying on little handknitted capelets for me.  In bright blue and red with a large S superimposed on another S. Super Squirrel!  Mild-mannered Super Squirrel is really…if it can just wrestle this thing on, ’cause that lady isn’t stepping any closer…

…oh wait. We haven’t gotten around to it.

Okay.  Re names: it has a circle of lighter, reddish fur around its round, baby-large eyes, giving it an almost Basset hound look.  So: Helen Red-Eye? (Nooooo…!) Reddy, short for Reddy-to-run? Red-onkulus? Not sure of the gender yet, it’s not like the grays with their white belly fur.

Redwood, for the tree overhead?  I’m sure my red-ers can help me out here.

Can Nut Lady come out and play? Pretty please?

It’s just the one, the red-bellied medium-black squirrel of the three siblings, that has decided my purpose in life is to open the door and toss it a walnut.  It has now learned that if the walnut goes past it, it’s still there, and will now turn and go find it.

It has surprised me the last few days (I apparently learn slower than it does) by perching there in the morning, watching me at the computer, waiting patiently for me to get with the program.

I am utterly charmed.  It’s training me well.

Okay, question for everybody: I succumbed to Margo Lynn’s mention of the Cherry Tree January sale and ordered some suri lace.  They threw in a grab bag with random additional skeins, a pair of SWTC needles (size 8, 32″–perfect!) and these two… black plastic hearts?

Anybody?

Is there some cosmic knitting significance to these that I’m just not grasping?  I am at a loss. Huh.

Meantime, Phyl, the purple flowers you gave me for my birthday are still blooming the winter away, as are the first of the amaryllises, a gift from Richard.

Happy January!

No, Dad, I didn’t.  But with memories of that restaurant in Florida you took us to when I was 9 on one trip and again at 16, making sure I ordered that stew on the second go-round, even if it’s chicken in it nowadays, telling me a little of the history of that dish…

Take my Dad to a restaurant he really likes once, and he will find it should he get any chance to return, no matter where it was or how long ago.  Let me tell you.  I was three and a half when he discovered a seafood restaurant by the water in an older part of Seattle.  We were in town for the World’s Fair.

My own vivid memory was not about the food, but at being petrified at the idea of stepping off a perfectly solid, stationary platform to get on a shaky, shuddering little flying car hanging from a wire way above the ground with nothing below.  Sitting in the middle of the air.  It was a crazy thing to do, and each time we took the monorail at the Fair, I let my parents know it.  Loudly.

On the very last day, I finally, *by myself,* (I was so proud!) holding Mom’s hand, chose to take that mindboggling step and I crossed that gap in the floor.   Our monorail car jerked right in that moment, scaring the bejabors out of me.  But I still did it. I did it!

I was in my early 40’s when we were in Seattle again, this time for my niece’s wedding; with an afternoon that Mom, Dad, my older brother and I had to ourselves, Dad was sure he could find that seafood restaurant again from way back when.

And he did.  And it was still fabulous.  I bet you he could name the place for you, too.  All I could tell you is, there was a drawbridge nearby on the water and antique Native canoes hanging from the walls and ceiling, with a floor that kind of meandered randomly up and down all over the place in curves to match the canoes. But oh, the chowder.

So.  Recipe: take one large empty round clear Costco container, formerly containing four pounds of in-shell pistachios (and a bajillion biscotti before that).  Eat many, many pistachios till everybody’s ready to give them a rest for a little while, set container in cabinet, let it get pushed progressively further back and forgotten about till the pistachios are good and, um, ripe.   Last year’s crop.

Toss the occasional nuts to the squirrels. It’s that or throw them out, and given a choice between squirrel antics or raccoons trashing the place at night?  Right.

Get bright-eyed idea.  Squirrels should earn their food, the little freeloaders.  Remove lid, set round container on its side with the last few pistachios in there–throw in a walnut to sweeten the deal–set it at the crack on the patio for a little initial stability and go back inside to watch.

It was hysterical. I had two, a gray and a black, show up so fast I didn’t even see them coming as I walked back inside.  Two who have been hormonal and territorial of late, who would never have allowed the other on the patio at the same time if they could help it, now circling the mouth of that canister together, the tail of the one wrapped almost ’round the face of the other and vice versa.  Step forward. Jump back.  The other hides behind him.  Reverse, repeat.   Fur-vently wanting in, fur-ventingly knowing no way no how.  Nuh uh.  The gap between solid ground and the who knows…  The wide world outside vs the interior of that piece of plastic claustrophobia…  YOU go first!  But, but, wait, not till I do, but, but…

Quick, Henry, the Flip! (Triple word score points to anyone who gets that reference.)

The videorecorder was nowhere in sight.  Darn.

Best restaurant in their little town.  They might even go in next time.  If only the cover charge weren’t so steep.

I brought it back inside so they wouldn’t stew over it for the night. Besides, they’re such hams, I want to capture them on camera.

Roomba squirrel!

When our first was a baby, I read everything I could get my hands on about nutrition and childhood: I was going to be a good parent to this perfect little new person.

One of the things I wanted to do right was to set her on  a lifelong path of liking her veggies.  (I guess I succeeded; she’s now the family vegetarian.)

So.  Sweets were out, even fruit juice till she got a little older–didn’t want to train her to have a sweet tooth, especially since type 2 diabetes was all over my extended family.

She was a young toddler when we were visiting back home one time, and my mom happened to make a really nice dessert for everybody.  When Mom was done, she put the spoon she’d been caramelizing the sugar for the sauce with in the dishwasher and turned away a moment, leaving the door down.

Sam toddled over just then and happened to grab that interesting-looking big spoon and, what else was a toddler going to do, stuck it in her mouth.

There was no wrestling it out of her hands. The *look* on her face.  What WAS this?!! YOWZA!!!

The squirrels vacuum in ever-wider circles under the birdfeeder, sniffing for any stray seeds, Roomba style. Leave’em alone and they’ll clean the place right up.

Someone gave me some just-slightly-sweetened walnuts for Christmas. I love’em, can’t eat’em, and nobody else here was going for them.  I finally decided, well, there’s more than one way to get entertainment value out of a food, and I put just a few outside.

I turned my head and one disappeared so fast I didn’t see it.

Then a bluejay swooped down, grabbed the second, then the last, then stood there with its beak very full waiting for the black squirrel who’d been coming for them as if to taunt it, flying away at the last moment.  Neener neener!  Got YOU, buddy!

Sibling rivalry, much?

I waited till the littlest black squirrel was around and put two more out just for it.

And it was like watching Sam at the dishwasher all over again.  What IS this?!!  Oh. My. SWEEeeeEET!!

It jumped up on a chair back to get a good view of anything incoming that might try to take it from her.  She didn’t run off with it, but sat there nibbling thoughtfully away.  It was a full half; it took her awhile. Then she came down and went looking for more.

And found it.  Even my opening the door to get a clearer shot (backlit by the lowering sun, but it was a good try) couldn’t dissuade her from staying right there savoring every second.  S U G A R.

Great Christmas present, truly. I totally love it.

When I was a kid, we came home from a trip out West one summer with a few Sugar Pine cones, part of my dad’s childhood, exotic in our own, and a delight ever after as a fireplace decoration and a bit of home to him.

And so it was with great delight of my own that I explained the backstory to Sam when we spotted them on the sale table at the Wild Bird Center today:  monstrous cones, slathered in suet and rolled in black-oil sunflower seeds to feed woodpeckers and the like, with a loop of twine glued to the end for hanging.  Sugar Pines!

I’ve spotted a ladderback in my yard a few times. They are huge, glorious black and white-striped woodpeckers that I would love to see closer up.  This might do the trick.  I bought one.

I had just the one spot where the squirrels were already trained to stay away from (and they d0.  So far.  Hoping this doesn’t–well, I’ll find out, won’t I?)  I hung the cone in the middle of the twiggy branch by the feeder.

It’s been interesting watching the little bird brains at work.

The squirrels ignored the whole thing. So far so good.

The house finches have always been feisty. They want the highest perch on the feeder and are often fighting their way up, then swirling off in a flurry of feathers and feet in a downwards figure eight pattern if another bird won’t give way fast enough.  When the seed level drops below the highest perch, they’ll still peck and threaten to get to the top and be king of the mountain, then fight their way back down to where they can actually eat.  Their position often means more to them than their food, and they will hang on when they’re done, loathe to give up a prime spot, till another one gets fed up with waiting and lets them know it.  Beat it! (Maybe it’s just their way of training me to pour in more seed.)

Meantime, the chickadees will hold back, coming and landing on the twig if it looks like there might be an opening soon.  They watch.  They wait.  Then when the finches fight their way off and let go, they’ll dart in, grab just one seed, and dash off to the trees to crack it open and eat in peace.  They know where all the openings are; they can gauge when a spot on the far side, out of their sight, is suddenly accessible and they’ll go for it fast.  They are bright little birds.

They never fight.  They don’t care if they have to hang upside down to reach what they want. They’re acrobats. And they are fearless.

And so it was this afternoon that this monstrous, you never know, this *thing,* it could be an owl, you know!, suddenly appeared by the feeder.

I wondered how long it would take the birds to get used to it.

The often-bullying finches were having none of it.

Then a chickadee went, hey, I know a sunflower seed when I see one! It landed on the twig and hopped right over to the pine cone.  It IS! And nobody else is around!  It pulled out a seed–and this time, for once, it didn’t fly straight away.  It had the thing entirely to itself and it knew it.  Nirvana!  It had lived for this day! It reached for a second. Then a third.  It did a chickadee dance for joy, running up and down the twiglets, checking it out here and there.  Coooool!

Eventually, the finches started coming; just one. Then another. But–they flew towards the feeder, pulled up at the last moment, then did this fancy dance in the air: yes! No! Yes! No! Yes! NO!!! and at the last darted away. Over and over and over, one, then a whole flock all at once.  They wanted that feeder.  They wanted that food.  They just couldn’t quite brave that horrendous risk.  They expended a ton of energy flying close but away, not daring to land.

The sun got lower, and you could tell they wanted dinner. Finally after yet another chickadee had landed by the cone–the chickadees had all ignored the feeder from the moment they’d discovered that cone–five finches went phew! and came at last.

But when the chickadee was done, they fled fast in a fright.

The whole afternoon, not a one landed if there wasn’t a stripey-headed little chestnut-backed chickadee announcing the coast was clear.  Not a one tried out the cone.

Score one for the little guys.

p.s. Happy New Year, and safe flying, Sam!

Greaaaat… Nope.  Can’t. At least not yet.  Broken? Let’s see, try again. Nope. “MICHELLE!” hoping she can hear from inside.  Waiting, all dignified-like, (splat, more like) dressed for the occasion in a (thankfully long) black skirt.  Car drives by–yo? No?  Well, this is embarrassing.

“MICHELLE!”

She’d been just on the other side of the wall in the living room and heard me. She came out and down the walk at about the same time the neighbor across the street came out and, seeing me being rescued, ducked gracefully away.

No, can’t get up that way, hon, that hip, that arm, nuh uh.  Let’s try that. Slowly.  Gently. Thanks.

“Mom, I know you don’t use the cane around the house, but maybe you should start now.”

I seem not to have broken anything after all. Maybe 50 is just the new 50.

Meantime, *brushing myself off, icepacks in place*, I do need to report on those squirrels. Those pistachios?  They were all gone the next morning.  Curious. So I put some more out to see; they’re a bit stale but not so much so as to feel guilty over feeding them to the wildlife.

It has been very entertaining and I’ll be sorry when they’re all gone.  A little black squirrel went YEEhaw! and came leaping the moment I pulled that sliding glass door shut behind me.  So much for the picky eating of the day before.  It was, though, watching it go at it, clearly a tough nut to crack; the little thing finally grabbed it in its teeth and ran for the grass and started digging furiously. Toasted Pistachio trees, here we come!  Grow your own!

Today they’d all gotten the hang of opening them and there were strewn shells for the first time.  What quite surprised me was the bluejay swooping down and grabbing one, its jaws pried wide open around that thing as it flew off. It hadn’t deigned to give those shells the slightest glance the first day but now it was all about the panache of the pistache.

It takes the squirrels awhile to get at their Crackerjack prize inside the box. Today, they mostly didn’t want to work at it out in the open on the porch. I wanted to watch them at it, and it became a game: I sat in front of the window reading, and they would wait till the moment I was engrossed in the page and then they would sneak up, grab one, and run for the trees.  I would look up and count one shell gone and even my peripheral vision had missed it, but they’d be up there, gnawing away.  I was only entirely sure that that was what was going on when I caught one at it.

Maybe I should only go out to get the mail or paper with a bag of pistachios in hand, so the bluejays can levitate me as they try to thieve the things out of here. UP!

The squirrels weren’t diving into those pistachios (I’d been curious).  No, no, thanks, plain sunflowerburgers for me and my bro, hold the mayo. Eww, waitress, there’s a hair in my picture!

A quick note–I hope I didn’t offend anyone, including Ms. Reddy, with yesterday’s bit of snarkiness.  A Mississippi Delta blues song that, to me, totally puts women down, sung chirpy and perky and with an Australian accent–it just didn’t work out well for me.

Okay. Moving along!

I did, however, put my friend Neil’s music on last night before going to bed and I sat in front of the speakers, absorbing the notes in just a couple of favorite pieces before turning in, reveling in how good they sounded with my aids adjusted to the new situation.  Planting something positive in my brain for future five a.m. half-awake brainstorm sessions. It worked.

Today I got a little knitting done in a waiting room: I saw my rheumatologist for the first time in exactly a year.  His nurse got me into the exam room and shut the door behind her before she exclaimed, “You’ve lost weight, haven’t you…!?” having no idea and clearly a little afraid to ask.

I hate having to fill people in from scratch and watching them wince.  But at least then she filled the doctor in for me.

He came in and got the details.  He did a fair bit of wincing himself, while I wanted to tell him, it’s okay!  But then, none of it was new news to me, and I deeply appreciated that what I’d gone through meant something to him.  (And her.)  I mattered. It showed in his face.  Thank you, Dr. F. And Nurse M.

I handed him the UCSF results and watched his eyes as he looked it over.  I told him that Dr. R knew steroids didn’t work on me, but there was no convincing the young doctors from Dr. R’s department working my case in his absence, who were sure that if you just threw enough steroids at that Crohn’s, it would tamp it down at last.  200 mg a day. (That is a breathtakingly high dose.  Granted, they were trying to save my colon and my life. Details.)

His eyebrows raised. “Did it?”

“It did absolutely zero.”

He allowed as how being as laid up as I’d been had contributed, too, but he made the diagnosis definite. Osteoporosis.  At 50.  Walk, he said, good that you’ve started walking again, take lots of walks. Some of the loss is irreversible, but some you can do something about.  And build that strength back up.

Another consultation appointment next week before treatment can/might start, the two doctors want to handle it together.  (Hurry, before we lose our current insurance policy Jan 1…   Don’t get me started…)

Nobody told the British Mormon missionary, carving his first pumpkin, that you’re supposed to cut the top off going at an angle so it won’t fall in on itself when you’re done–so his jack o’lantern ended up with a hat on its bald head, a pumpkin with a costume.  (And he did an impressive job making an expressive face, but I don’t have a picture–you’ll just have to take it on faith.)

The hubby bought candy. So did I. Oops. Total number of small children: about 10. Medium-sized children: 1.  “Take some more” can only be repeated so many times and be gotten away with when the child’s mom or dad is standing right there knowing full well what you’re up to: better your fight with yourselves than ours with our kids, was the unspoken smiling conversation.

Where are the towering greedy teenagers in goofy outfits when you need them?

I put Michelle’s jack o’lantern on the back patio afterwards to see, today, if the wild things might take interest. The wild things’ reaction was they weren’t going anywhere near that scarecrow head–we had  a squirrel-free zone and even ground-bird-free zone all the way till this afternoon, till finally one towhee braved that patio. Did I get to see gray squirrels doing the bobbing-apple dive for the seeds or the peanut butter I put inside that pumpkin?  Did I get to videotape baby black squirrels climbing through eyeballs?  No I did not.  Two finally showed up and only one so much as deigned to sniff in poor Jack’s direction. Rejection is brutal.

It didn’t hit me till later that for all but that one older kid, we could have skipped the candy thing entirely and helped Peruvian women feed their children actual and decent food: the handknitted fingerpuppets!   The little ones would have been thrilled! Their fingers could have been costumed year-round!

I AM slow sometimes! Oh well. Now you know what I’m doing next year, and the cash outlay will actually be less.

Except for a small bag of Reese’s. For that one eight-year-old. And maybe (not that I’m admitting it) me.

I made it to the post office yesterday, and on my way there there were turkey vultures circling–at first glance, it seemed they were above the new assisted-living center in town. I thought, c’mon, birds, that’s tacky.

But I had maligned them.  They were, rather, staking out the garden center two blocks closer in.  Ah, I see: vegetarian turkey vultures! Spotting a would-be gardener with a brown thumb arriving at the hopefully-named Summerwinds–definitely the territory of fly-in-the-sky plans–and waiting to zero in on the kill. What’s on the menu, friends? Tulipanfried bulbs? Apples, crisped by the drought? Or maybe peaches; they would make a cool whip.

Okay, almond my own business now.

The first picture, taken this morning through double-paned windows, is for Lene, who has a much better camera.

Let’s see, what’s in the fridge that needs using up…  Zucchini, leftover guacamole, bacon bits, some cheddar we could melt in there, hmmm… (offered to make some on the side with tofu mozzarella and the kid heated up a can of chili instead.)

She: “I’m sorry I forgot to cook dinner.” (She’d made and decorated and filled up on chocolate cupcakes.)

Me: “I bet he’s more sorry I remembered to.”

He: “No thank you; that’s enough Venusian slug guts for me.”

He: “She’s giving me that look.”

She and he more or less in unison: “MOM–she’s LOOKING at me! Make her STOP!”

We’re all space aliens here.  Pass the black holes on that flying saucer for me, willya?

(The lighter areas on the towhee are flash artifacts.)

LynnM says that that order of Superballs would be enough for all the employees at the Pentagon, but that they probably don’t play at work like that.

I told her, of course not; those would be weapons of mass distraction.

Meantime, I got a nice dose of October in the mail yesterday, a surprise from Margo Lynn: the best of the bright red autumn leaves around her in Connecticut, with just the slightest touch of dampness to them (perfect!) as I pulled them out of the package, thundery storms and blustery days and all the color the trees celebrate the season with all right there in my delighted hands.  Very thoughtful and very cool, thank you, Margo Lynn.

I wanted to see the reaction of the locals to this cultural event.  It took a moment. The patio didn’t look quite right, or maybe it was that Feederfiller/Godzilla hanging around with that camera.

The towhee checked things out first and decided to play leapfrog over the offerings to get at its dinner.  The black squirrel thought about it but hung back along the fence a moment, thinking things looked suspicious; a few minutes later, though, there he was, sniffing out each leaf one by one.  It went back to the long, narrow leaf, the first one it had gone to, and took a few thoughtful bites before deciding no, it didn’t want to eat its veggies after all.  Back to the sunflower seeds. It nosed around and under the bright maple leaves, while the mourning doves looked on and debated.

Watching them awhile, I didn’t get any knitting done…  Code Red!  Alert the Pentagon!

At Purlescence I reached back towards some of the baby alpaca on the sale table behind me and got caught wincing. I admitted I’d had a recent near fall and someone had grabbed me on my way over and had saved me. I’m glad they did, but my shoulder’s been begrudging it.

“You need to come with airbags,” one knitter opined about my balance issues.

I hesitated just long enough to almost have some sense of propriety before I opened my mouth and went straight for it and answered her, “I do, now.”

So.  ‘Hem.  Meantime.  I read somewhere that a Slinky toy on a birdfeeder pole will send the squirrels and their ex-seed-ing greed back down to earth.  Curious.  That could be entertaining, along the lines of the kid I saw trying to run up the then-World’s Longest Escalator (the downward side, of course) at the Montreal World’s Fair, Expo ‘67.  I was in third grade at the time and stunned, stuck between being awed at his having gotten halfway up–IF he’d started running at the bottom, good and honest–and the idiocy of the idea. I remember looking up at whichever parent was closest and half-asking if I could try that or was it as dumb as it looked.

They quickly affirmed it would be stupid.  And don’t.  I think they could just picture all six of their offspring suddenly taking off trying to beat each other going the wrong way through a crowd unhappy at being pushed at long narrow heights, and somehow that idea just didn’t appeal.

Dunno if they make Slinkys wide enough for my awning poles, but, hey.  I thought it would be worth checking out; we were going to Target anyway.

Ever try to find a low-tech toy these days?

Online later, I did find them. And variations, including–now wait a moment.  I’m assuming someone placed a special order and that they had to make so many and now they’re just trying to sell off the rest of the stock.  (Tell me this isn’t in their normal line!)  How about: 14k gold-plated. Slinkys!

This is so begging for CEO jokes.

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around and around and around and…but I think it’s flipping out.  Can you just picture it? A golden pawshake for the high-fliers.