Then Gov. Walker said he did not want the train and sent it away.

The good little girls and boys cried and cried when they did not get their toys. Too bad, little boys! Too bad, little girls!

That year, like most of the years before, Santa did not bring Gov. Walker any toys, either, because Santa knows who has been naughty and who has been nice.

A pile of mulch in my driveway that I could climb to get a much better look at the nest next door.

A neck injury that prevented me from moving the pile of mulch into the garden beds, thus leaving it a climbable pile for much longer than I intended.

Mom robin at work

This is early on, mom robin at work, shot from the bathroom window. I watched this bird for a long time, worrying about her health and that of her eggs. Dad robin showed up every now and then to give Mom a break, but he really wasn’t into the whole nest-sitting thing. Mostly he just stood on the edge of the nest and stared at the eggs. I wonder if he was thinking, “Wow, what a miracle!”  Mom would return soon and he would fly off.

The evil grackles would show up now and again, thinking they might score a little robin omelette. I saw one particularly close call, where Mom, who was on the ground, just beat a tree-lurking grackle back to the nest. It was better than watching the Packers win the Super Bowl.  

There were moments of despair, when I saw no nest action at all and thought the worst must have happened. No, no, no!  Oh, the humanity! Oh, the birdanity! Oh, the robinanity!

The Earth spun again when Mom returned. 

It became an obsession, this nest-watching: Are you all right? Are you OK?

Finally, there was new movement in the nest and, ta-dah!

Very young robins

Once the kids are born, of course, there is a whole new set of worries. Will they fall out of the nest? Will my neighbor’s pugs get them? Will a grackle eat their eyeballs? 

Who will pay for flight school?

The kids

They grew.

Last night I was headed across the back yard and there it was, sitting on my garden fence.  Joy! 

Independence day

I cannot swear it is one of “my” birds. I choose to believe it is — the nest is empty now – as I choose to believe it will live a long and happy life and have many robins of its own.

I watched it hop down from the fence and away, into the bushes.

The cherry on top of the scoop of outrage was the layout of the story’s jump. It was next to a jump of a story about 21 Milwaukee Public Schools nurses losing their jobs because Walker is proposing to cut a $1.5 million grant that helps pay for them.

A $250 million giveaway for big business vs. $1.5 million for nursing services for mostly impoverished children. Not a tough choice for the gov, apparently.

Nice package, JS.

Let’s say misdeeds in those elections are proved, but all the suspicous activities surrounding the David Prosser / JoAnne Kloppenburg race remain just suspicious activities.

What happens? Does Prosser remain a Supreme Court justice by virtue of unprovable election fraud?

Although the backup stunk less than the Waukesha County ballot count and was much easier to clean up. And I threw out only some laundry and mops, not faith in the integrity of the electoral process.

Went to my first Brewers’ game of the season last night. Victory!

Really, really wanted JoAnne Kloppenburg to win. Victory!

Sometimes life just falls right.

Ald. Robert Bauman: “What’s the remedy if all our forestry and sanitation workers strike with the next big snowfall?”

City Labor Negotiator Troy Hamblin: “The new law says if they’re gone for three days we have the ability to terminate them.”

Bauman: “Then what’s our remedy?”

(Laughter)

Committee Chairman Ald. Ashanti Hamilton: “Cause the snow is still there.”

Hamblin: “I don’t know. I just — I don’t know.”

City lobbyist Jennifer Gonda: “That is exactly the point I was making. There are some practical implications here that, frankly, weren’t well thought out in the drafting of the bill.”

“Is that whole arrangement subject to an equal protection challenge?” he asked. He was referring to the way Gov. Scott Walker’s union-busting bill treated the police union (which would be able to arbitrate on an issue-by-issue basis under Walker’s bill) is treated better than even the firefighters’ union (still with collective bargaining rights, but no issue-by-issue arbitration under the Walker bill) and every other city union (totally screwed under the Walker bill).

Bauman’s question is met with a momentary silence that said it all.

“Very good,” he said then.

“Closed session,” Committee Chair Ald. Ashanti Hamilton told him.

Chris Abele, though, simply does not have his act together. Yesterday I got an big Abele campaign ad boasting that Chris would rescue the county by freezing the budget of the county executive’s office and cutting back on county cell phones.

Golly. Won’t that accomplish a lot! Those pennies, combined with several hundred million dollars more, and the county’s problems will be solved!

Today the JS reported that Abele hasn’t paid state income tax for at least four years (note to paper: invoking Uncle Sam when discussing state taxes is a federalism error).

The Abele campaign sounds absolutely lame trying to explain it away:

“Chris Abele has paid the taxes he’s owed,” said Abele campaign aide Brandon Lorenz, who confirmed that the candidate also had no federal tax liability last year.

Lorenz noted that Abele, the son of a co-founder of the medical equipment company Boston Scientific, draws no regular salary from his family foundation, makes significant personal donations to charity and pays a five-figure property tax bill.

So just what is the Argosy Foundation’s compensation structure for Abele? That “no regular salary” statement does not rule out a hefty paycheck in some tax-avoiding form or another.

Lorenz goes on to make matters worse by making clear just what a fancy schmancy house Abele calls home:

As for Abele, his campaign staffer emphasized that the first-time candidate paid more than $64,000 in property taxes last year.

Abele bought his N. Lake Drive digs for $2.6 million in 2005, according to the paper.

The decision is finally made: Jim Sullivan for county executive.