Have you ever had one of those days when your PMS craziness is happening at the same time as your parrot's extra-crazy birdness? Trust me. It happens. And it isn't pretty.

That's the way today has been going.

It started during the morning bathroom routine, during which Harley wanted nothing to do with his usual activities, and everything to do with New! Something New! What's That?! Is That New?! Can I Drop It Into The Garbage Can?!?! Finally, I pulled out one of our classy storage boxes from under the bathroom sink, and let him go at it for awhile.

This is actually a good toy idea. Dimensions and objects will vary depending on your bird's interests and size, but the general idea is to put the bird on something he can't climb off of, that contains things that will hold his interest for a little while. Specifically, this is a wine carton with the top cut off, partly filled with miscellaneous bathroom stuff that was mostly out of Harley's reach. I was watching him the whole time, but when you try this at home, you'll fill your box with bird-safe toys instead of scissors and extra razor blades, right? For all his hard work, I let Harley chew on the box of band-aids for awhile.

Yeah, next time I'll plan better for this. But still, it's a pretty good toy.

The moodiness continued over lunch time, when Bruce went Upstairs! To The Bedroom! Without Harley! To put some "business casual" attire on so he could meet some people for lunch. Without Harley! Needless to say, Harley's unhappiness was loud and continuous, to the point that I pulled out some sharp knives.

I've already mentioned my ongoing struggles to encourage Harley to eat the whole-grain, organic "food" I lovingly sprout, cook and chop for him every day. Just this week I've decided to substitute cooked grains for sprouted grains. Since Harley and I were on our own for lunch, I sliced up a carrot and a pepper, sauteed them in olive oil and curry powder for a few minutes, added some frozen spinach, some already-cooked buckwheat grains, and pasta sauce from a jar, and set it out for lunch.

Harley liked it pretty well. Here he is hulling some grains of buckwheat. (Yeah, Harley is one of the few big birds I've heard about that hulls his hull-free human-grade grains.) He totally flicked the pieces of pepper away (Can I Drop Them Into The Garbage Can?!?!?), but he ate quite a bit of carrot. So overall, it was a success.

I thought it was okay, although I've been known to eat plain, raw tofu. By choice. So I'm not the best gauge of this sort of thing. Besides, I know where the humans keep the chocolate.

Extreme food close up: