The other night I was watching a thriller on my laptop (before it died). Gutsy9, the baby peacock, was, as usual, on my shoulder and wide awake watching the screen. Suddenly, a scary scene erupted unexpectedly and, without thinking, I covered his big, innocent eyes with my hand.
I have always been a bit overprotective!
Note: Still using minilaptop while big one gets fixed so not keeping up as well as I would like to with other blogs and commenting, alas.
Even though Anthony is now being cared for in the nursing lodge, and I am no longer physically exhausted, the emotional exhaustion has been a force to reckoned with and I seem to be susceptible to any flubug doing the rounds. I just rang and asked the head nurse if I could visit today but she said no because of my flu – understandable. But I haven’t seen Ants for 3 days now and he is as forlorn as I am about this.
The first time I succumbed badly to a flu was a few years ago when Ants was still at home, Ming was still at school and I was still working. That was the beginning of the end of the way we were. I ended up in intensive care, with very bad asthma and exhausted. I had to take leave from work, we got more home nursing help and Ming began to take over some of the night shifts looking after Ants – toiletting, turning him over etc.
It soon became obvious that I would not be able to go back to work in my usual capacity because I couldn’t leave Ants alone. On several occasions I would come back from dropping Ming off at the busstop, or from the local shop, to find Anthony had fallen.
My job allowed me to continue to teach online and I threw myself into this with gusto but the night shifts continued to take their toll and I got sick again, and again.
It’s just flu and no big deal but I wonder why and how I could still be so fatigued when I am no longer working, no longer up all night and when I feel so positive. The only thing I can put it down to is a slowly breaking heart.
I know exactly how to remedy this because I have decided that this year will be full of laughter no matter what.
Carers get sick too and this is the trouble. So if you are a carer, look after yourself. I always hated it when people said this to me but now I understand.
Just before Christmas, Ming had an idea for my presents and we went to a bookstore where he asked me to pick out a bunch of books I wanted and then he would pick three while I went outside the shop. He explained that this would mean I would still get a surprise. So I gleefully picked out six books and left the shop.
So on Christmas morning, I opened the first of my three presents, knowing that it would be a book. But it was two books! And each of the presents contained two books, so Ming had bought me all six and that was the surprise. My delight was contagious and he laughed, saying that he’d been worried that I would choose more and he would have to buy all of them when he didn’t have that much money. He wrote a message in each of the books and some of these were funny, some loving, all illegibly beautiful!
Then he said he had another present and told me that he wanted to spend his remaining savings on a holiday for me at a resort north of here – a whole week! I said no way but I would take 3 nights and he made me shake hands. “You can be all by yourself, Mum, without me and Dad and everything, and you can write and chill out. I’ll look after the birds and dogs and you can just relax.”
Tonight – on this first evening of the new year – he turned his consul off and asked me to come into the living room for a talk. I joined him and we had a long, philosophical discussion in which he said, “I just want us to talk to each other more, Mum, get reconnected, so we both don’t get all sad again.” At that moment, I looked out the front window to see the redgum that Ming bought me three years ago flowering for the first time ever. He noticed it too and we exchanged a smile. “Happy New Year, kid,” I said.
The best gift: Ming.
Thank you, Anthony.
Post publication note: For some reason this post is backwards! Sorry. I hope it still makes sense!
I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed.
Can we go back inside now, Julie?
She said yes too but then she pecked me!
Are you my mum?
Could this be my real mum, Julie?
He said yes!
Are you my dad?
Is that my dad, Julie?
As most of you know, a little over three weeks ago I found a newly hatched baby peacock outside, apparently abandoned. I knew that the peahens were nesting here and there but I hadn’t discovered any eggs or nests and two of the peahens seem to have disappeared. They are very good mothers usually but very unwise layers and I surmise they have laid in the paddocks and all of the eggs, chicks and maybe even these two mothers have been killed by foxes.
So I have been raising Gutsy9 myself and he and I are totally imprinted on each other now. He is a pied, so half white and half blue so it will be interesting to watch him grow up. At night he sleeps in a box in the veranda and during the day he sits on my shoulder. Every afternoon I take him out when I feed all of the others and he is less frightened of the adult peas than they are of him. They tend to peck at him a bit but they are slowly getting used to him.
But raising a lone chick of any sort does present a few challenges if you are a human so here are a few tips:
1. Do not take a baby peacock to a restaurant inside your shirt and continually stroke him because it will make you look like you have a breast fetish.
2. Do not allow a baby peacock to kiss you on the lips if he has just had a dinner of mealworms.
3. Do not take a baby peacock to an appointment with a counsellor.
4. Do not succumb to a baby peacock’s 5am crying, get him out of his box, go back to bed and let him sleep on your head because you might find something odd in your hair when you wake up.
5. Do not let a baby peacock sleep on your shoulder with his butt in your face; turn him around so his face is next to yours.
6. Do not put a mirror next to you so you can check what a baby peacock is doing on your shoulder because you will realize that you are developing a double chin.
I hope this has been helpful!
Last night I was feeling really low with my flu, the hot weather and a smidgen of rage against a couple of people who have hurt Anthony over the years but especially recently. I had planned to write about this today until I read these two wonderful posts by fellow bloggers:
http://eof737.wordpress.com/2012/12/29/reflections-keep-the-faith/#comment-33855
In reading both of these posts, I realized that to write about such negative stuff is absolutely pointless and probably extremely boring.
So instead, on this broiling New Year’s Eve, I will show you Gutsy9, the baby peacock who spends most of the day on my shoulder. He is now 3 weeks old and getting too big to hide inside my shirt. His tail feathers are growing and his crown has begun to sprout. He can fly across the room or the back yard with ease. I love him.
Yesterday I blogged about two rather serious things – one happy and one sad. Today, I feel like a bit of humour so I will tell you about something that happened just before Christmas.
The phone rang and I told Ming to take a message and, after a strangely long conversation with someone who was obviously unknown to Ming, he made a few notes, said goodbye and then came to tell me who it was.
“Mum, that was an old friend of Dad’s and she wants to come down from Perth with another old friend of Dad’s. They’ve heard he is in the nursing lodge and they want to see him.”
“Oh, that’s fantastic”, I said. “What are their names?”
When Ming told me I got the giggles. “Those are two of his ex-girlfriends, Ming!”
Ming was suitably shocked and wondered why I was giggling.
“It’s okay, they were well before my time. I’ve heard other people talk about them over the years but these two women would be around Dad’s age.”
“So you don’t mind?” Ming asked. “Aren’t you jealous?”
“No! How can I be jealous of girlfriends Anthony had when I was in kindergarten?”
So we will soon be visited by the exes – how interesting!
One of things Ming says to me most often these days is “C’mon, Mum, have a laugh!” So today I will tell a funny story.
Gutsy9, the baby peacock, is now two weeks old and is quite happy to sleep in his box at night as long as he can spend the day on my shoulder. Well, when he was one day old, Ming and I had to go to town to do numerous things and I didn’t want to leave Gutsy9 alone for so long, so I took him tucked into my shirt. Ming had a gig to set up for, I had a lunch date with friends, then Ming had a counselling appointment and I was going to visit Ants (another reason I took Gutsy9 with me – I wanted to show him to Ants.)
Okay, so I dropped Ming off and went to the restaurant. Gutsy9 was asleep inside my shirt almost under my left arm so I kept my left hand on him through the shirt, sat down at the table with my friends and ordered. Gutsy9 was quiet to begin with but soon woke up and chirped, so I took him out and showed my friends who were rather aghast so I quickly chucked him back into my shirt and joined in the various conversations. A couple of hours later I picked Ming up to go to counselling and he’d forgotten I had Gutsy9 so said, “Oh that bloody bird – you’re the one who needs counselling.” He was quite nasty and I was hurt.
Anyway, the counsellor had asked me to come for the first bit of Ming’s session so I went in with him but said I couldn’t stay long because of the bird. I pulled Gutsy9 out of my shirt to show her and she looked, well, a bit surprised to say the least. Then we all sat down and she asked me how I was. It never ceases to amaze me how those three simple words ‘how are you?’ can reduce me to tears – which is what happened much to my horror. I said Ming and I had just had another altercation blah blah blah, and she suggested I stay for the whole session but I said no because I wanted to take Gutsy9 to show Anthony.
So I left and drove up the road to the nursing lodge and spent a very pleasant hour with Ants and Gutsy9 then went back to pick Ming up. By then, Ming was repentant but tentatively suggested that I should have some private counselling sessions of my own because he had been helped enormously. I told him I would think about it and we went home.
It was a few days later, when I was telling some other friends about the counselling experience, and they were laughing hysterically, that I realized how stark, raving mad I must have seemed to the counsellor and to my lunch companions!
Anthony, on the other hand, wasn’t the slightest bit nonplussed because he knows me, adores me and accepts me.
So, “C’mon, Ming, have a laugh!”
And guess what – we are both laughing today – yeeha!
Gutsy9 just hatched.
Gutsy9 – 2 weeks old today!
Well guess what I found out yesterday? Gutsy9 is definitely a male and he is also pied which means he is half blue and half white. So I was probably right about King being the father and one of the white peahens being the mother. A friend who was doing some painting here took one look at him and said “You have a pied peacock!” He was so surprised. Apparently we may find a few more little Gutsys around in the next few weeks but, since I haven’t been able to find any nests, it seems unlikely.
Here is a link to a website that shows pictures of what a pied peacock looks like when it’s fully grown. I found this very interesting.
http://database.amyspeacockparadise.com/blue_pied.html
It’s possible, of course, that Prince might be the father.
But all of the peahens tend to avoid Prince because he is so immature.
So this must be Mum.
And this must be Dad!
None of Gutsy9’s possible parents, however, will take him under their wings!
jmgoyder 