An update before the forum upgrade...
Today was a serious wing flapping day, which I encouraged with gusto! She's got some new feathers coming in... Looks like secondary to me, but I am nervous about touching her wings long enough to get a good look underneath. This is very exciting because she's been clipped for virtually her whole life. She laid a couple eggs the week before I picked her up, and in that process she barbers her blue primaries. Those you can see well, they're causing obvious discomfort with their jagged edges. I'm told she will pull them if they get too irritating. All of this means she's going to have flight feathers sooner than I anticipated!
She said a new phrase today, "who's my baby bird?" So, we both called her a bird today, which was fun. I explained to her that she is indeed a bird, and birds fly, so flapping is very important... And seriously fun!
Several things happened today that made me believe she understands English fluently and, like pinky and the brain, she is plotting to take over the world. I'm okay with that as long as she doesn't terrorize Mr Theo...ever again...ever. A little bit of jealous vindictive behavior, I think.
She asks for baths a lot. She doesn't like them as far as I can tell, but I still try to get the keratin flakes washed away before her best drowned rat impression. It makes me think of the rat birds from cloudy with a chance of meatballs. That makes me laugh, and draws serious ire and dirty looks. She seems to really enjoy hanging out in front of the heater vent A LOT, though, so I'm going to try that without the bath when the opportunity presents itself. I explained flying will feel similar, and is of course what birds do. We also had the, "be careful what you ask for," talk again, but I think she stopped listening as soon as the air was blowing. I may be sleep deprived, but I'm sure I saw the bird version of an eye roll about the lecture.
We seem to be establishing boundaries, and that is such a reasonable thing compared to the mutual frustration.
My work is changing, and I will need to adjust our sleep schedules. No one will be happy if I don't get decent sleep soon. I cannot function without it, and I already look like someone punched me in the face. Or a raccoon...but one that has not slept well in a few weeks.
We're leaving for car shopping in an hour. I don't expect to be able to sleep until after work tonight. I'm going to try to shift sleep schedules by half an hour until we get it working well. It may be a tough week.
We see the vet on Tuesday morning. Yuck, another routine disruption. I have never used this clinic before, but there aren't many avian vets here so I will need to be careful about getting too picky.