This week has been an absolute rush! I thought that things would calm down after the theology conference colloquium last week. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I did get back on schedule with one thing: I spent the afternoon with C and the girls.

It was a lovely day out in Balmedie.

Points of interest
- the sister learned to say 'recalcitrant', 'variegated', 'tintinnabulation', and 'harmonica' today.
- the goddaughter can now say 'Tom'. Well, actually, she say 'Thom'. You can definitely hear the 'h'.
- I mowed the lawn. Can't let C do it in her condition and A is gone to the rig unexpectedly.
- I must learn to make cauliflower cheese. Delightful.

Tomorrow I will see Pirates 3, pack for Cornwall, and install a cat flap.

It's another warm, muggy day in Aber-vegas, so I went down to do a bit of gardening in the front garden this afternoon.

I discovered that some wonderful soul had taken a rake to it and mulched it some. It looks so, so lovely. The smell of the roses wafts up to my window and makes me a very happy camper.

Since the front is done, I went out the back to see if there are any green berries on the brambles yet. (I predicted that we'd decimated too far and that there would be no berries this year. Hate Love to say it, I'm right.) In amongst the brambles is a seagull.

Now, I noticed this seagull in the backyard for the last two days. I didn't think much of it, they seem to like our backyard as a worm catching site or what have you. (Actually, I think they just like pooping on the lawn furniture. Dirty sky-rats.)

So, I shoo the bird, as I'm trying to give Caoimhe a treat and she's freaked out. (Unsurprising, as the bird was shrieking like a banshee since the time I came out and it's got a good 6 kilos on Caoimhe.)

The bird didn't fly off. Now, yes, seagulls here are lazy gits, so I ran at it. Out came the wings, but no flying off. I chased it some more...round and round the garden we went. (I'm sure that the upstairs neighbors got a right chuckle if they were looking out.)

So, the conundrum: it's scaring both Caoimhe and the other cat, Monty, with in an inch of their lives. Mostly because other seagulls keep dive bombing the yard. The seagull is brownish, is it a baby? It's enormous, so I ask that semi-rhetorically.

What do I do? Even though they are dirty little buggers, I don't think I could bring myself to kill it. (If I did, as slow as it flutters away, it wouldn't take too much strategy to wring its neck.) It doesn't seem sick and definitely isn't injured externally, but I don't want it to die in the back garden either. At that size, it would stink up the place.

In any event, I'm taking the camera down to see if I can get pictures of it, and of the two cats all puffed out. They're bristling like they've never bristled before.

Edit: The downstairs neighbor, D, says it's a baby. Guess we'll leave it.

Kitty went out late today. She was too dang cuddly. Plus, I was tired. She was full of crazy energy when she went since she'd been in so long.

I went down to see how the garden flowers are coming along about 4 pm and discovered that Caoimhe is a true Aberdonian.

She'd killed me a pigeon.*

Bear in mind, this cat is small. Tiny. She probably exactly weighs 3 kg.** I'm guessing that the pigeon weighed a kilo. It would be like me fighting a...well, a really heavy guy. Admittedly, I have no claws.

Silly kitty, I don't eat meat.***

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* She killed a sparrow before, but it was miniscule.
** Definitely more tramatizing to weigh myself in order to discover her weight.
***She apparently doesn't eat things covered in feathers because she wouldn't even lick the blood off her cheek and paw.

What the hell was I thinking mowing the lawn in this heat?

Oh right. Must be the brain damage.