Category: Neighborhood

Black-Capped Chickadees & Chipmunks

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Black-capped chickadees are one of my favorite birds because they are just adorable. While I’ve heard them frequently throughout the years in forest preserves and even our neighborhood, I’ve rarely ever seen one. Not only are they pretty tiny (4-6 inches), but they are very fast. Now that we have a feeder, they’ve recently started visiting us. We had our first visitor on Saturday, in fact, and I was able to snag this really nice photo of it.

This morning I spotted two chickadees at the feeder which made me so happy! Since then they’ve been coming by every hour or so. They like the suet I put up, but will also grab the black oil sunflower seeds and fly off to crack them open in a tree. Unlike the sparrows, finches, and mourning doves, they will not eat at the feeder. I guess they prefer their privacy.

Besides how cute they are, I love their distinctive little chirps, because I know they’re there before I even see them. Wookie, however, doesn’t like their vocalizations for some reason, and she gets huffy when she hears them. I told her to leave my little bird buddies alone.

Another creature we’ve never seen, not even once in this neighborhood, is the Eastern chipmunk, so imagine my delight when I spotted one under the feeder on November 6th.

I’ve not seen one since, but I think I heard one further away from the house when walking Wookie earlier today. They retreat to underground burrows for the winter, so I suspect it was gathering sustenance and we might not see another one until spring.

August 2023 Recap

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8/03 (Thu)
Joe’s work gives employees a half day off work for their birthday so we decided to pick up a movie from Redbox and grab lunch from Beef Shack. They recently put an Atlas Chicken Shack next door so we got some rice balls from there as well.

8/04 (Fri)
Joe took a vacation day and we went to Cantigny Park in the morning. My biggest gripe with them – they have landscapers with very loud and obnoxious leaf blowers all over the property. I don’t understand why they can’t do that outside of visitor hours. Needless to say, despite the beautiful gardens, the visit wasn’t exactly peaceful. To add insult to injury, they proceeded to ignore my inquiries about whether there are certain times they do the leaf blowing so I can plan my future visits accordingly.

8/13 (Sun)
We went on our first bike ride of the year at Armstrong Park. I only made it 15 minutes before growing too exhausted. Apparently the fact that I walk on my treadmill nearly every day of the week doesn’t mean squat when it comes to riding a bike. Muscles I forgot were there were so sore.

8/15 (Tue)
Ran into a fellow nature photographer I’ve been talking to online at a local park. I knew it was only a matter of time since she lives in the area and frequents many of the same places we do. We had a nice conversation and she gave me some helpful info on where to find certain species of birds.

8/16 (Wed)
They ripped up the road in front of our house as part of ongoing roadwork that started in July which includes replacing most curbs (ours excluded since they were in good shape) and the entire street in our subdivision.

8/17 (Thu)
Bought a new dip at Costco from La terra fina called Smoked Gouda & Peppers, and let me tell you, that has to be the single best dip I’ve ever had. Not only is it delicious with crackers, pita bread, and naan, but later in the month I mixed a small amount into some scrambled eggs and it was amazing.

8/19 (Sat)
Was craving takeout, but wanted something a little healthier than normal fast food fare. Yelp to the rescue! We discovered a Korean place called Bibibop and decided to give them a try. So glad we did because the food is fresh and flavorful, and the green sweet tea is amazing.

8/22 (Tue)
Joe had the day off work since the original plan was to visit the DMV (or Secretary of State as it’s called in Illinois) to get our REAL IDs. We cancelled it when we realized they were working on the roads and we didn’t want to chance not being able to easily get back to the house because Wookie is on medication I need to give her at a specific time every day.

That being said, we did go out in the early morning to Springbrook Nature Center in Itasca.

Unfortunately, it was a morning of loud noises. When we arrived at the nature center the landscapers were unloading mowers. We walked out to a section far away from them but the loud expressway was there and the planes taking off from O’Hare were flying low overhead every minute.

Stopped at Krispy Kreme and there was a mower right by the drive-thru speaker so the employees couldn’t hear us ordering, nor could we hear them. Then mower guy just stopped there but didn’t turn off the mower. So annoying! We couldn’t go inside to order like we tried originally because the doors were locked for some reason even though it was 8 am.

We got home to them paving the street so that racket was going on for hours as well. Lukcily the road was safe to drive on by the time we were ready for a late lunch.

I had a sudden craving for Red Lobster and they had a lunch deal where you get to pick four different types of shrimp, two sides, cheddar bay biscuits, and drinks for two for only $22. Not a bad deal, even having to pay a bit extra for caesar salad which is considered a premium side. They had this crab rangoon shrimp which was absolutely amazing, particularly with the accompanying dipping sauce. Everything else was ok, but that stole the show.

8/26 (Sat)
I’ve had a Super Mario t-shirt for approximately two years (Joe found it at Savers but I stole it because it’s so soft and comfy) which I wear frequently and no one ever commented on it until two men complimented me on it in the same day. Talk about random.

We took advantage of a T-Mobile Tuesday offer at Burger King so we could get “free” Whoppers. Mine wasn’t actually free because they charge $1 extra for the Impossible patty and another $1 for cheese. I’m ok with the latter but was a bit annoyed since there was no fine print about the Impossible Whopper not being completely free. It wasn’t even as good as I remember it. You had to spend $3 to get the “free” sandwich, so we also tried the chicken fries (pretty good, although the strong pepper flavor gets overwhelming after awhile) and the bacon double cheeseburger which was hands down the best item. In fact I keep craving another one.

8/29 (Tue)
I realized what I’ve been experiencing on and off since I got sick in 2019 is called closed eye hallucinations and they aren’t indictive of brain or eye damage.

Sometimes when I have my eyes closed I’ll notice a colored orb that kind of pulsates across my field of vision while changing size. These orbs are usually purple, bright pink, or neon yellow. They can get pretty intrusive and hard to ignore, but it doesn’t happen too often.

8/31 (Thu)
I started reading a Stephen King book (Fairy Tale). This is significant because years ago I got so frustrated with the shitty endings in his more recent work that I vowed not to read another book of his again. Luckily this one didn’t suck and had a proper ending with closure.

USPS Ridiculouness

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I had to make this it’s own entry since it’s so long.

Back in December I posted this to Facebook:

Let us count the ways in which the post office has screwed up in the past two weeks, shall we?

– 1 package was marked delivered 12/12 but has never materialized. Filled out a form on 12/17 and have never heard a peep from anyone. Since as far as the seller is concerned, it was delivered, so we have no recourse (it was a Christmas gift for me from Joe) and are out $20

– 1 Christmas card envelope was delivered without the card inside

– 1 Christmas card (from Terri) was in our Informed Delivery on December 23rd but has never materialized

– We received 3 village newsletters (1 on one day and 2 together on the same day)

– We received 2 pieces of mail that are not ours (one for the next door neighbors and another for someone who lives two miles away)

– My Cure Wish box set is missing. I pre-ordered it over the summer and it was supposedly shipped in November. This one might possibly still show, but I have no way to ever know where it is because the seller doesn’t provide any tracking information. Lesson learned; will not order from overseas again. To add insult to injury, I’m out $31 and could have gotten it from Amazon already for $10 less.
Until this year we’ve never had an issue with the post office but this is beyond ridiculous!

In January I posted this update:

1 – Today a man left the missing Christmas card from Terri in our door. This was caught on my doorbell camera. I do not recognize him from the neighborhood and when I went out to retrieve the mail, he looked to be sitting in a car out front, so who knows how far away he came to deliver it, but that was super nice of him! Unlike whichever neighbor got my Christmas gift and kept it. Lord help me if I see someone in the neighborhood wearing my t-shirt….

2 – I previously filed a second claim, this time online, for the missing Etsy package and the post office came back saying the postal carrier delivered it (I’m sure they did – just not to the right box), so I spoke to Etsy customer service, opened a case, and was refunded yesterday. I tried dealing with the seller directly but all they kept saying is “tell me how I can help” even after I told them how they could help. I was even willing to order again from them if they could ship the item UPS (which I told them I would pay for) but their response was “tell me how I can help”. I think there was a language barrier. An Etsy rep assured me the refund would not be deducted from the seller before I summitted my claim (I think Etsy eats the cost) as I did not want to harm a small business. It’s not their fault the post office sucks!

3 – I’m still waiting to hear back from the place I ordered my Cure box set from. I submitted an inquiry a week ago and it said to expect 5 business days for a response due to heavy volume. I wonder how many other people never got their orders. Without a tracking number how can I confirm they even really sent it? Ugh.

The Universal Music Store, where I ordered my Cure box set, did in fact reimburse me, so I ordered the set from Amazon and not only did it arrive in two days, it was $10 cheaper. Lesson learned; no more overseas pre-orders for this gal.

Haunted Trail Walk & Halloween

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Saturday, October 29th

Our local park district offered a haunted trail walk for $5 per person this year, so we signed up with our friend, D. We had attempted to attend the event last year but it was cancelled due to rain. This year it was just very cold outside. The park they chose to hold it in was one we’ve never been to before but was close by which was nice. But that’s where our luck runs out.

This park had a small building they were using as a staging area for each group but you had to wait outside for your turn and like I had mentioned, it was really cold out! In addition, even though there were lights on the exterior of the building, they weren’t on, so it was pretty dark. The person checking people in had to use a flashlight and even then couldn’t find us on the list until another person intervened. The whole thing was very disorganized.

In fact, they were running behind, so we had to wait about twenty minutes past our scheduled time in that freezing cold. This one lady was smoking and no matter how far away we stood, I could still smell it. I thought it was pretty rude of her to be smoking at all considering how many kids were in the area. Plus she was with kids! Of course she ended up in our group and even though she wasn’t smoking on the actual walk, the damage had already been done and my hair smelled like smoke when we got home.

I’d like to be able to say all the annoyances were worth it in the end, but sadly, they were not. They had stations set up along a walking path that were like chapters in a scary story about an escaped kid or something (it was so lame I wasn’t even paying attention) and you could tell the people involved hadn’t participated in such a thing before so they weren’t very good at acting or scaring people. Needless to say, it wasn’t scary in the least (and I’m a wuss), or fun, and I couldn’t wait until it was over so I could get back into the warm car. We definitely won’t be signing up for that in the future.

Monday, October 31st – Halloween

On Halloween we got about 10 kids or so which worked out well since I had put together 9 treat bags from the large bag of candy we got from Walmart.

Look at the uneven distribution of flavors, though! I think I might just hand out full sized candy bars next year.

Mums The Word

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I love mums in the fall! Every year it’s a challenge, however, to find the best ones without spending a fortune because I like to get a few different colors. It’s also a delicate balance between picking the correct time to buy and finding quality plants that will produce big blooms. Well, this year we achieved the trifecta and not at the place you’d expect. I got three 8″ mums from Meijer on September 25th for only $6 each.

I dropped the pots they came in into another larger pot with soil in it and I think this has kept them draining well (and I only water them occasionally).

Here’s what they looked like on October 6th.

Since then they’ve gotten fuller and are still looking good because I also brought them inside twice when there was a frost advisory.

Compare that to the big $18 mums our neighbor bought, never maintained, and now look like rotted death, which you’ll have to take my word for since I didn’t get a picture of them.