Bird for breakfast anyone?

Well, our Sun Conure, Soleil spends alot of time on my shoulder in the morning while I am getting breakfast ready for the zoo and the family. This morning I bent over to get some eggs out of the fridge and then I shut the door. I heard this muffled squawk and thought, " That's weird, that sounds like Soleil in a drawer." I looked on my shoulder- no bird. I ran to the microwave in my sleepy and stupified state and looked there- no, just bacon. Then I heard it again- I opened the fridge and there on a side shelf next to the mustard was a little parrot. I laughed and laughed. Our whole family used that as our "when you need a laugh today, think of this" moment. Later, one of the cats got in and I said to Jon, " Where is Jackie?" He said, " I don't know, look in the pantry or the oven."

Clean like bleached laundry!

I do alot of laundry. I do all my family's laundry and then I do the laundry for 14 dogs. I take the dog laundry to the laundromat and it takes about two hours to wash and dry it all. Now, I don't take REALLY NASTY stuff there- if someone throws up or poops on it, it gets thrown out- all of our sheets and blankets are donated, so throwing one away once in a while doesn't guilt me out too bad. However, the remaining laundry is filled with dog hair, sand, and occasionally urine and always has doggie smell. I put it all in huge lawn bags and go the the laundromat. Everyone there knows me and I am a pretty friendly gal, but when I get ready to take that laundry out, I am almost mortified for anyone to walk by me. "What if they smell this sheet where poor old Pancho couldn't hold his urine?" " What if they smell the dog smell?" But I go ahead and put that laundry in the washer with lots of soap and bleach and hit the hot water button and then go read a magazine. In 40 minutes, I take those sheets and towels out and WOW- they smell SO GOOD and they are SO CLEAN!!! I put them in the dryer with a dryer sheet in and in another 45 minutes, I have stacks and stacks of wonderful smelling, clean, fluffy dog blankets and towels. The other day I was putting the clothes in and I thought, " Wow, isn't this how we all feel about our sin? We want to hide it from everyone and "hurry up and get rid of it". And Jesus says, " Put it in my washer!!" And Jesus uses AWESOME BLEACH- you cannot smell or see ANY DIRT when He gets done with our "load". And we have a sweet smelling life because we didn't keep our stinky laundry hidden in a dark bag, but got it into the washing machine, even if we did feel a bit embarrassed to do it. And He doesn't care if our load of guilt is REALLY STINKY- he just cleans it just like he cleans the "kind of dirty" loads. I am so glad we have a laundromat for our souls that is open seven days a week, 24 hours a day and there is ALWAYS AN ATTENDANT on duty!!!