Would you believe Pen,

On Sunday I was attacked by a seagall.

Let me explain. The day started innocently enough. Wendy agreed to be a champ and come with me up the coast. We get breakfast. She is ever generous with gas money and wildflower seeds. We stop and taste honey. The one I bought of course mom explained is the one everyone buys. Orange. I have already in the first slip fallen into mediocrity. But we venture on. We witness a bmw bike being knocked over at a gas station, (As another man who had been having a dialogue with himself rushes over in loose fitting leather pants to help....) and the man not being able to pick it back up. I feel that should be a requirement of purchase, but nevermind. Up the coast we go. I am already having second thoughts, not having thought this through and already so far along. We pull up and I can't bring myself to pay $10. I haven't packed a lunch. It is already near to 12. I ask the kids at the gate about seaweed. She's like, um, we like, totally have seaweed. I say, can i go look at it. She's like, um... yes? She says, Just park in the 20minute spot. So we do and I'm already a little down at the sight of hightide and already drying out clumps and twists. But there is some- it is out there. Though not in mass quantity and cleverly hidden like black uninteresting blobs. I am sad now i didn't collect more- of course- that i didn't keep going down the stretch of beach but nevermind.

We head back down to ventura. We get gas. I pull up on the wrong side. I have to enter the transaction at least 3x. It cuts me off at $50 but i leave it at that. There's no bathroom. But there's an in/out close and delicious fries await. We make it to the beach, find parking close and bring our bounty to sit on the rocky shore. We are distracted by the seal, distracted as it comes out of the water and seems to be having a dialogue with the 2 young girls. Too distracted to see that one by one large LARGE white gulls are beginning to perch by us. One by one. Talking to one another. We immediately bring up Birds. Wendy confesses a fear of them since but she recovers quickly as one dive bombs her head. We think that was close. I think odd. Bold behavior. I take a 3rd, maybe fourth bite of my double double and thats when it happens. Swoosh. And the bastard takes my burger. But the meat insultingly tumbles out into deep sand as they rip apart the packaging. Never in my life have I had to take revenge on mutinous mineminemine birds. But there are enough pebbles and rocks close by as one by one i take aim.

Wendy even lets me have half of her burger as I still angrily eye the birds who dare to flap back. Toss.Toss.Toss. Thud.Thud.Thud. The packs of dolphins feeding nearby eventually turn me from my hurling rock enterprise. We read poetry. We grow cold in the wind and decide to go but not before I get a few more shots in. Never in my life. I shake my head. We drive back down inland. We get cherries which are sadly not that sweet. I get fizzy water. And wendy gets purple licorice. We make it back into town and she drives off homeward. And then i think, what a curious day.

m-
ps.
My kitty cat Marley is holding steady. I think we decided to spoil him rotten with tuna and forgo dental surgery for now since the infection is gone, as we think he got into something which made him sick and just happened to uncover bad teeth. We'll see. Pampering may just continue into his future.

Also, I finished Hunger Games. It is a catchy read. I did find for all that the end dreadfully rushed and you know what I'm talking about. So SO rushed! COme ON. Kudos for plot twists though despite the somewhat  flimsy philisophical treatise on why war is bad and why peace is good-*duh*- BUT page-turner. I think it would make a good tv episodic on the sci-fi channel. I would totally watch.

ttyl.

dear friend,

my mom found the head of a kitten on her property and its detached paws... i asked her where jesus was in this image and i can only hope the kitten is now romping around in heaven waiting for us to get there and its going to tell us how jesus brought it back to life and gave it a name. we have no idea what beast brought to bear on the tiny thing or why nature must be so cruel but there it is. i wouldn't mention it but it's one of those dark horrifying things that people don't talk about and yet there it is lingering in the mind. Like the young starling I 'saved' who was so panicked to be captive died in a stretched out mode of panic and fright looking frozen ever outward and crawling with ants... Whatever targeted the young weak innocent thing is probably at the root of that creepy guy in those posters- with that look and those eyes... we all know about. And if my life weren't currently grinding and tragical/comical i would definitely think my mom was in some sort of dark suspense thriller. and then in light of that the strange dreams, the wind- the large branch in the yard, the ominous background music, where else do you go from there. a curious footnote. you think, are those shingles a sign of something? a portent. some insidious thing.

and then go on talking about banal things like wii tennis and some xbox game called the hunter something. and a dvd compilation on contemplation you bought on amazon (i hope it doesn't suck) or being in love with the word codswallop. all of those trappings and fittings until the sinister twinge of the violin. but we go on. we read books on chaos theory. we think- pattern. we think jurassic park is a good example. we believe there's something stirring. we grow watchful. we worry about our own cat with nervous glances at his well being. we remember the word fractal but can't define it. we think- snap-out of it. we draw the blinds and think about the book we read about praying the hours. knowing we're nowhere near vigil but we grow tired. we grow exposed.

but we keep putting on ointment (the shingles which quietly annoy and grow hot) and burts honey lipbalm, distractedly as our foot arches and turns in place. checking our messages and finding the only thing to watch is antiques road show. but we don't hear a word. we glance up and some picture of the brooklyn bridge is worth 30,000. we wish whatever it was, wherever it is was worth a goldmine. we look for something to do now that the nails are done (pink sparkle) and the cuticles trimmed, 3 cut in, probably from that one day when i was dehydrated and drank nothing but tea and cranberry juice. 

but nevermind. and then you remember the neighbor. the one with the jesus sign and the fake flower story from a friend and you think unstable. you think unhinged and ungodly- are there bodies under there? it was in a story i read. but wait they weren't fake it was maryhigginsclark. nevermind. maybe it was really about the goatshead and the probably satanic rituals happening where you might have lived. and you hope for light to break and to sleep through the witching hour so you can sit in your garden full of flowers and think- no, no, everything is going to be just fine.

m

Penabird,

so yesterdays most magical moment was the scrubjay that was flitting around the patio. it paused to pluck down a wasp nest and i was immediately entranced. and then it kept staring at me, coming closer and closer, from palm frond, to closer palm frond to window ledge and so then in a highly scientific process i selected things for it to try. lets call him nomenclature. he liked the pistachios and almonds. though i was sorry not to have peanuts for him. i spied him later eating a caterpillar in a snapdragon patch. but nomenclature hasn't come back. i hope he does. i am sure he can probably talk. and he did let me get really close to him and open the window without frighting him away so we also have great rapport. oh come back to me nomenclature! don't let me go back into this dull world without you.

do birds feel grief?

Yesterday I was sitting in the backyard while the children played on their waterslide, and out of the blue there was a random *thunk.* A bird’s nest fell out of our Japanese maple. And it turned out there had been an egg in it, and it did not survive. Sadness! No commotion of birdspeak, feathers or flying followed the incident, and so perhaps it was just gravity. Or poor planning on the part of the builder? I couldn’t help but wonder about the mama bird who just lost one of her  young, and whether she knew it was her fault, or not, and did she lament the fallen nest and egg on the ground. Or maybe it was just an *oops,* or a *damn, that’s inconvenient,* and she moved on to build a new nest and lay the rest of her eggs without lingering. I suppose I’ll never know the answer, but it was still sad, anyway. And I swear I still don’t like birds. Okay, maybe a little bit. Maybe.

It Happens, Sometimes

Today, I stepped in dog shit, which I haven't done in a really long time. I hate it. I mean, who enjoys it, really, but considering we have two dogs and a fenced-in backyard, I am considered a High Risk for stepping in dog shit. It's a miracle I went as long as I did. I'm usually very careful, but there's all these leaves, and pine straw, and dried-out grass, and it's really hard to tell where the lawn ends and the shit begins. I was trying to clean it up with the scooper, so K.Lo and I could play in a larger area, but honestly, the amount of shit was just overwhelming, and so I stopped. Anyway, my biggest problem with stepping in dog shit is that it is so difficult to clean off the bottoms of one's shoes. I mean, do they put bubble gum in the dog food? Why is it so sticky? I was going to let the shit dry out in the sun so I could bang most of it off and move on with my life, but then the sky darkened and it looked like rain, and so I brought the sneakers in to clean off in the sink. I had to use a sponge, and a bamboo skewer. Probably I could have looked for an old sponge, but the kitchen sponge was right in front of me, so I used that. Don't worry, I threw it out. And even though I am fairly frugal, and that's a big waste of a sponge, I do shop at Costco for kitchen sponges, and I figure it was better to waste one of them rather than a pair of shoes. I'm glad they didn't have a deeper tread.

In other shit-related news, we bought a new baby swing today for N.Lo, and he blew out his diaper within 10 minutes of sitting in it. So I had to clean shit out of a baby swing today, too. And also off of N.Lo, who has a talent for filling diapers with copious amounts of the stuff. We don't even bother with wipes, he just goes right into the sink for a bath. Which can sometimes be difficult to manage, setting up the bath and stripping the child of clothes and messy diaper, all one-handed.

Other than that, it was a pretty good day! I'd tell you what I ate, but it doesn't seem appropriate in this context. At least I didn't have any run-ins with attack geese, which by the way, also have giant, unsightly shit.

incidents

• At Target today, my total was $6.66. Does this not bode well for the chili I plan to make with the ingredients purchased? Sheesh.
• On the way to the car, we passed by a shopping cart that was swarming with black birds. The woman whose cart it was just finished loading up her kid and peered warily from the other side of the car. "Looks like they're attacking your cart," I say. She comes around to the back and stops several feet short of her cart, looks at me. "What should I do?" she says. "I don't know, start screaming?" I say. And she does. It's awesome. She jumps at them a little and shouts, and they all scatter. She ducks for cover, all the while laughing hysterically. "They're probably after all the Cheerios dropped on the bottom of the cart." So fantastic.