Seven Quick Takes on Hummingbird Nectar, New Facebook Options, Loving my Label Maker, and More!

:: 1 ::

We gave A-Age-Ten a hummingbird feeder for Christmas last year. I think this {and the bird feeder we gave Q-Age-Eight} ended up being the best gifts we’ve ever given. There is a tree right outside their window, and we hung the feeders so they can see all the commotion from their desk. It’s been great.

But that is not my point. It took a while for A-Age-Ten’s hummingbird feeder to get much action. One would drop by an take a taste on occasion, but it would be once a week, if that. At that point in time, I was wondering if the feeder was a very bad idea for a gift. So I googled around, and I found some speculation that the powdered feeder mixes aren’t that great for hummingbirds, that they prefer a real sugar blend. We took that to an extreme and bought unbleached, organic, non-GMO sugar to see what would happen.

What happened was remarkable. We went from very little attention, to having to refill the feeder multiple times per week — sometimes even more than once per day. We have three regulars that come daily and fight with each other over the feeder, even though there is room for four to drink at a time.

Have you ever seen a  hummingbird fight? It’s amusing.

Anyhow, my advice is that if you buy a hummingbird feeder, go organic. Our homemade nectar is four parts water and one part sugar.

:: 2 ::

Recently, Facebook rolled out a new feature that will give you more control over your newsfeed. I added a screenshot at left so you can see what I mean. On any page you have liked {including the Afterthoughts page, hint hint 🙂 }, you can hover over the like button and see new options. In the image at right, the “Default” option is selected. This means that Facebook’s algorithm will decide whether or not I see new posts from this page. If I change that and select “See First,” new posts from the page will automatically appear in my newsfeed.

For some pages, you might prefer the algorithm. But for pages that are really important to you — like if you don’t want to miss my updates about planning the year and how this necessitates a margarita 😉 or you found out that I do giveaways and special tips there sometimes — you can switch to the “See First” option so that you don’t miss out.

:: 3 ::

This week’s links collection:

• Why babies in medieval paintings look like ugly old men from Vox culture.
  • You know you wanted to know!
• Where has the Reader of Conservative Classics Gone? from The Imaginative Conservative.
  • The ignorant conservative, more like.

:: 4 ::

This month in 2014…

Last year. I know, I know. I’m supposed to be dredging up really old posts, from 5-10 years ago. But I couldn’t resist because this dovetails with my post on poetic knowledge from earlier this week. Click here to read it.

:: 5 ::

Yesterday, we did our annual summer tradition with Friend R. and her children. We bravely took all seven of our children to our favorite beach without a man. If you think that doesn’t sound very brave, I consider the five hours of driving {total} and the three six-year-old boys we brought, and I maintain.

A couple of the girls found a crab {see Exhibit A}. We didn’t know that kind was here — we’ve only ever seen sand crabs here before. So that was fun.

Anyhow, it was a great time, and we are only slightly sunburned, so we’ve agreed to do it again next year.

:: 6 ::

I am totally infatuated with my new label maker. One of my goals for the new office bookcases was to label the shelves. I blamed this on the children, but really I think it will help me. I have issues, I guess. I decide what a shelf is for, but then I start to second-guess myself, and then other stuff ends up there because of that, and then all of a sudden it is just a junk shelf instead of a functioning part of our home organization. Anyhow, the labels will help me remember what I decided things are for, you know?

This shelf in the photo, by the way, is pretty exciting. The shelves in my library {which I’m not labeling, because they are Nice Furniture} aren’t quite as wide as these new shelves for the office, and so my education books quickly outgrew my library space for them. Because of this, I was very tempted to leave education books lying all over the house — because they couldn’t all be put away at once, no matter what. Now all of my education books have a space to live, and they are all together in the office. It’s dreamy.

:: 7 ::

I don’t have any questions to answer this week, which is just as well because my mind is mush. Thanks for not making me think too hard.

Since I don’t have questions, I thought I’d present a little study in contrasts: my two sons. They are not only complete opposites on the Myers-Briggs Test {ISTJ and ENFP}, but they are also opposites in birth order {oldest and youngest}. And their desks are an illustration of how different they are. They share a room, and it is like there is an imaginary line down the middle. On one side, Order. On the other, Chaos.

When the messy side doesn’t make me cry, the whole thing makes me laugh.

I really am trying to help the little guy, but sometimes it feels impossible.