the adventures of Muffy and Hellion

Red-and-green macaws feeding on a natural clay lick near Blanquillo, Peru on the Rio de Madre de Dios. Known as geophagy or "earth eating" macaws feed on clays to counteract poisons from the seeds in fruit they eat. We sat there across the river for hours watching them. They're very shy, and will come down from the trees only very slowly after "scouts" check it out to make sure it's safe. Several different species eat the clay, and smaller ones come down first and only later do the larger macaws come.
Copyright (c) 2007 Wendee Holtcamp

I was just making banana-blueberry muffins while Savie ate lunch, and she says to me, "Can I come up with a nickname for you"?

I replied, "Well that depends on what the nickname is. It has to be something nice."

"What about Muffy?"

"MUFFY?! MUFFY?!!!! You are NOT calling me Muffy."

She meanwhile is snickering. "What's wrong with Muffy?"

"That is like the most obnoxious bowhead twit girl name I could think of" (My apologies in advance to anyone named Muffy out there! It's just the association I have with the name).

"What was the name of that dog you hated?" she asks.

"Buffy."

"Ah that's right."

"Tell you what, you can write a book with a character loosely based on me and you can call her Muffy. And I will write a book with a character loosely based on you, and I will call her Hellion."

"Hellion? What does THAT mean? You're calling me a HELL-lion?"

"You don't know what hellion means?!"

She runs in my office and looks it up on the computer. Then I hear this loud voice emanating from the other room. "UGH! I am NOT a Hellion!!! MOMMMMM!!!"

Later, I said, "Maybe we have those titles reversed. Maybe YOU are the Muffy and I am the hellion?"

Oh, I guess I should already say that my ex has a nickname for me: Doonbury. Don't ask how he came up with that one, I don't know... He didn't want to call me "Mommy" to the kids when we first split, and it didn't make sense for him to call me by my first name to them, so he started calling me Doonbury. Or Doon-berry? Dune-berry? ;)

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Yesterday was a good day. In the afternoon, I went to Fiesta Azteca with some girlfriends for a few ritas (they have $2 margaritas from 2-7pm on Wednesdays and they're strong!) We told stories and laughed, and then decided to head back to Dawna's hot tub. I love love love hot tubs so this was great. We stayed at Dawna's for a couple hours, and then I headed home.