Muffs and geese

I am not unaware of my vulnerability. I have always accepted the reality that whatever information I put in to these little plastic things is at the mercy of unseen powers out there in the internet. A concept, by the way, rather challenging for the younger generation to grasp. Social media vigilance is a full time job for parents now, the van with smoked out windows once easily spotted if driving thru the neighborhood has now taken the form of slick social media platforms with full 24/7 access to my daughters bedroom.

Although the occasional internet glitch comes as no surprise to me, I am too impatient to accept my fate with grace. So you can imagine my irritation when, working on a blog post, I went to refer to something on Pinterest and found this:

pinterest purgatory

I have been stripped of my followers and denied the option of following. I have no more pinterest feed. I feel as though I have been sent to some kind of pinterest purgatory, wondering if I will be accepted back with the cool kids or am I banished forever?

Before this little irritation, I was noticing a lot of muffs on pinterest. An unusual time of year to feature winter wear I thought, but they reminded me of the little white rabbit muff I had as a girl.

I felt so sophisticated in that muff, very ladylike. For the Nutcracker one year (back when a family could go to the ballet), I got all dressed up with my shiny little patent leather shoes, my little white gloves and, the piece de resistance, my new white muff. I walked down the stairs from my bedroom, quite carefully and slowly with all the sophistication  I could muster. In the back hall we had coffin stairs, very steep and very straight, so I held the bannister the whole way down just like I thought a young lady ought, and I anticipated the impression I would make. But I didn’t realize that the bannister wasn’t very clean and running my little white glove the whole way down left it quite soiled when I got to the bottom. I was crushed. I thought my mother would angry, my grandmother would be disappointed and everyone at the ballet that evening would know that I was not a young lady, I was just a little girl who can’t keep her gloves clean.

Also, I’ve been seeing a lot of geese on my pin feed

Every Spring they would come to Alconleigh, waddling & munching, a few pairs at first, then a whole skein.

fuzzy little gosling bottoms!

There were a couple of white geese that would join the flock and it looked like quite the little petting zoo. We would save the heels from our finished loaves of bread -WonderBread, can you imagine?!- and go out to feed them.

Here’s why that was particularly fun: Geese are bold. I don’t know how or why but these animals have the self confidence of WWF wrestlers. When you are feeding them, they have a tendency to become increasingly more assertive until they are practically snatching it out of your hand. They slowly close in on you, and if they reach you before you feed them, they can nip. If you toss a piece to one goose it will back off for a moment, so the trick is to feed the one closest to you and hopefully you have enough time to rip of another piece of bread before the next one gets you. When the bread ran out you had to run away, hell bent for leather, and hope for the best. It was like the Flintstones version of a video game..

The white geese took it one step farther-they would knock on the door. They waddled over to the back door and pecked it demanding tribute. Canada geese are aggressive enough but this move undoubtedly won their respect.

dont ask this guy for money

Once, my brother was lying in the hammock when a goose took issue with his presence and attacked him. With all the wing flapping and hissing, my brother found himself in an unusual predicament and wasn’t quite sure he would be able to hold his position. I don’t know what precipitated this fracas, maybe they had words, maybe my brother owed the goose money, but whatever the cause he was trapped in the hammock calling for help until my mother came out and somehow shooed it away.

On a completely different topic, I am fed up with blogging so rarely. “Who is this parvenue?,” you must be asking yourselves,”..who thinks she is such big papers that she need only blog once a week?” I don’t blame you for wondering- I have resolved to spend time blogging every day so even if I don’t actually publish every day (they take me a while to write as I live the kind of life that only allows me 20min at a time to do anything) at least I will have (hopefully) 4 up a week. How do the rest of you do it?