I went walking along the creek this morning because my shin and ankle hurt too much for me to run. The creek is high and muddy from the rain we’ve had (most excellent thunderstorm night before last) and there was a pair of swans. Then I saw a beaver swimming downstream. I jogged a little to catch up with him, then walked parallel with him for a while. This irritated the beaver and it dove and came up further downstream, and nearer the far bank. As we got closer to the swans, I saw that they had 6 cygnets and they saw us (noticing first me, then the beaver). One headed downstream with their young and the other swam first in my direction, then towards the beaver when it noticed him. The beaver dove again and resurfaced down stream from the swans and we all relaxed.
It was tense there for a minute.
Then I walked back home, where I picked some lettuce for the tortoise, and noticed that a horde of slugs had discovered our lettuce. They prefer the iceberg to the arugula, which is probably harder for a slug to pronounce. “Let’s eat the aru- arugu- oh, fuck, let’s have iceberg again.”
Then I cleaned litter boxes. One of our cats learned a life lesson last night, it seems, namely that it is easier to eat balloons and rubber bands than it is to keep them down.
Wow. The only life lesson I learned last night is that my son is easily distracted. We went to his first grade music program, and while most of the other kids were busy belting out songs and hamming it up (my friend’s daughter in particular is probably a future pop star), my son was sort of mouthing the words and spent most of his time looking in the opposite direction from where the music teacher was “directing”, though he also got in some really good dancing. I asked him what he was looking at the whole time, and he told me Vanessa’s sisters were playing on the floor. I had no idea toddlers were so interesting, so there’s another life lesson.
So the crick is high, did you watch it rise? And how am I ever going to get to the caulking, etc., etc., if I’m reading footnotes? Oh, and art is a therapeutic, mystical process…don’t let anyone who thinks they can tell people how to paint tell you otherwise.