51% Sweetheart ... and don't push it!

Today I am missing one of my favorite sweatshirts. I don't wear sweatshirts much in Hawaii, but this one carries an appropriate sentiment for the day. Used to wear it to work when I was in a really nasty temper. Those were grab-the-cameras-and-a-car-and-run-to-the-mountains days. The image hand painted on the front of the shirt gave everyone fair warning: Keep Your Distance! 

This guy, properly a Turkey Vulture but commonly known around Tuolumne Co. as a buzzard,  is majestic in the air.  But when he is sitting in the middle of the same 2-lane country road  you are supposed to be traveling, cleaning up road kill, he can be intimidating.  Standing what sometimes feels like knee high to a giraffe but in reality is a mere 2-3', he is probably one of the least attractive birds known to man. 

When a couple of dozen of them are roosting in an old, skeletonized oak or pine tree, "puffing up" their wings just a little in the early morning light, ostensibly to dry out the overnight accumulation of moisture, they create an interesting and handsome picture. 

What, you ask, is the connection between road kill and that favored sweatshirt?   It's the bird.

The bird Ray drew on my sweatshirt (and left me to paint) is clearly Mrs. Buzzard, with long eyelashes and a steeley look intended to warn folk off.  The look is reinforced by the caption:  "51% sweetheart, 49% bitch.  Don't push it." 

After a very long day struggling to remember where in the new software package the photographs I just downloaded are hiding ... or why the start and finish times keep  adjusting themselves to Greenwich Mean time ... or how to incorporate all those folk in our congregation who don't use a computer and therefore don't have an email address ...

Next week it will be better.  Next week I will have another training session.  Next week I will have some practice behind me.  Next week ... 

Pray for all those who are building  new skills today.  In any field.   Give them patience, clear minds, and more patience. 

Oh, that's the other buzzard shirt.  Patience my _____.  I'm going to kill someone.  That works for today, too! 

Pray for R who celebrated a Zero Birthday yesterday, and  JA who celebrated her own non-zero day today.   And for M, whose birthday was the 2nd.