Bird-watching
Look! A heron/stork/wading bird of some kind!
Yup, that’s what that is. Think I took enough pictures of it?
animals other than dogs
Birds and creepy stories did the trick
I was a little blue when I left the house for my run today, but being outside (or running or time or podcasts or ducks) lifted my mood. My run was chock full of what passes for excitement during the week. First, I freaked myself out. I ran on a new part of the path, and just as I entered this very cool tunnel of trees, where it got darker and atmospherically creepy, a character in my podcast started describing the time she saw a little boy at the end of her bed, and you know what? I’m not going to keep telling that story because I’m in bed now and I’m freaking myself out again. Trust me – it was scary and I was in a scary part of the trail that I didn’t know existed and now kind of want to avoid. Except it was cool.
Later, I saw a heron/stork-type bird (skinny legs, long beak) staring intently into the rapids of this little creek. He looked like he was fishing, like he might dart forward and grab a fish any second, so I stopped to watch. He gave me a look, went back to staring at the water. Gave me another look, stared at the water. After the third look, I left. I was cramping his style.
On my way home, I saw a family of four feeding dozens of ducks while leaning on the sign that describes the harmful effects of feeding the waterfowl. The ducks didn’t seem to mind.
That’s it. That’s my exciting afternoon. Don’t mock – I felt better.
Taking advantage of the rain
I mentioned the rain the day we went to Epcot, right? Well, I forgot I had proof on video. While everyone with any sense was hiding out under every structure with a roof in the park, one duck took the opportunity to scout for food.
We were hoping for a break in the rain so I could make a dash for the nearest bathroom. Over the course of our four days in Disney parks, I got very familiar with the bathrooms. Surprisingly, the one in fake Canada was the worst. Fake Morocco’s was great.
Poor lonely slightly cross-eyed cat
I heard the loudest cat in the world the other morning. I was sitting at my desk working when some cat started meowing. It was so loud I thought it was in the room with me for half a second. (It wasn’t.) I checked outside both office windows, but didn’t see a cat. I checked the backyard – no cat (unusual, considering how often we see cats in our yard). I eventually found it, sitting on the hood of our neighbor’s car, facing our living room window (which is as far away as you can get from my office), yowling its head off.
I meowed at it. It meowed back, and that was the end of the conversation. Maybe it just needed someone to acknowledge its existence. You exist, kitty. Now shut up.
Soggy routine
I get up, work, go for a long bike ride. While I’m out, I get rained on, and I see a wild animal. Today, it poured for seven miles, and I saw a fox.
This is my life now.
I miss running, not least because I didn’t feel I had to do it for an hour and a half to burn any calories. You’re less likely to get rained on if you’re not out for 90 minutes. I need to join that gym. I’ll get a pool, weights, classes, no rain, and no wildlife. And eventually, I’ll be able to run again.
Too close
I saw a raccoon on my bike ride, right in the middle of the highly-traveled, well-populated park. It was the middle of the afternoon, not dark, not all that overcast, and in the spot where I saw it, there were half a dozen people running, walking, and biking in both directions on the path RIGHT NEXT TO THE RACCOON. There was also a guy on a bench nearby watching it. I sent him a “Was that really a raccoon?” incredulous look, and he gave me a “Seems to be. What can you do?” shrug in return. I know Eugene is in the Pacific Northwest, and by definition, that makes it closer to nature than anywhere else I’ve lived, but I think today’s encounter (fine, “encounter”) took it a step too far.
The raccoon was in the grass between the sidewalk and the trees (with the river on the other side of the trees), and it was barely in the grass – less than a foot from the sidewalk, I think. It was HUGE – bigger than Roxy, smaller than Riley – and it had its front paws on the ground and its back arched like a cartoon cat. Really big head. I didn’t have much time to think about it, but if I’d been any further away when I saw it, I might not have ridden by it so close. I whizzed by with no more than 3 feet in between us, I think. It happened so quickly I didn’t have time to be nervous.
Fact: raccoons don’t look so cute when they’re that big and that close.
Caught in the act
I spent most of this afternoon reading in the backyard. It was peaceful for a while, but then the neighbors starting chatting in their yard, a blower and a lawn mower started in another yard, and that cat traipsed through the rear flower bed. Too much traffic. I gave up and went inside.
Not long after, John called me to the window to see the same cat hanging out on our gravel path, settled in and acting like he owns the place (as cats do).
Photographic evidence:
From the door
From the edge of the deck
Leaving after I got too close
Angry with me for making him leave
Of course, he left the yard, I went inside, and he came right back. I don’t really care if he hangs out in the yard. I just don’t want him to treat my yard like a litter box.
Under attack
The universe may have been trying to tell me not to ride my bike today. Before I left, I had to convince a fairly large spider to get off my front tire. I convinced it by wheeling my bike around. The spider wasn’t on the tire anymore, but I don’t know where it went. I didn’t crush it.
Worse than that, I saw a snake. It was slithering frantically off the bike path and into the tall grass, and I saw it at the last minute. I’m pretty sure I didn’t run over its tail, but I did shriek and nearly fall over and crash my bike. It was a small snake, but it freaked me out.
THEN, last but least scary, a dog charged me, growling and snapping. It was on a leash, and I was racing by, so I was probably in more danger from the spider that went missing, but still, I flinched.
It’s amazing I didn’t crash my bike today, actually.
Not my cat
There’s a neighborhood cat who uses our backyard as a shortcut several times a day. This cat, the one we see the most often (not the only one, though), is probably the one responsible for all the cat poop I keep finding while weeding the flower beds. That’s not a fun discovery when you’re on your hands and knees. Good thing I wear gloves.
I’m pretty sure he has claimed our yard as his own (I’m not sure he’s a he, but whatever). The other day, he was sitting on the gravel path when another cat wandered through. There was no hissing, no spitting, and no fighting. Just glaring. There might have been growling. That other cat hurried on out of there.
I’ll get a picture one of these days.
I’m like a mountain goat
I saw a podiatrist today, and while discussing what is wrong with my foot, he referred to my deformity. Apparently, I am deformed. Really. (Mildly, but really.) The doctor pointed out (although I will be getting it checked out for real) that my right leg is longer than my left leg by enough (no measuring occurred), and that I have been overcompensating for it when I run (he can see by the callus pattern that I roll outwards on my left foot and inwards on my right), and that overcompensation finally caught up with me. The pain I’ve been feeling is a spasm. He taped up my foot to help relieve the spasm, and he says I can go back to running pretty much immediately, as long as I ease into it. If it still hurts by the end of this week, or if it changes how it hurts, I should come back, but there’s no sign of a stress fracture right now.
YAY!!
He also gave me a lift for my left shoe to help make up the difference, and I should wear supportive shoes (like my running shoes) or get supports to put in my other shoes (like my Chucks, which have ZERO support), and only wear shoes like that for the next 6-8 weeks. I should stay away from flats, sandals, flip-flops, slippers, and any other shoe without support until the spasm is all better. Oh, and I shouldn’t even wander the house barefoot, so I’ll be wearing supportive shoes ALL the time for a couple of months.
Blah. But treatable! So blah is okay. But now I’m all concerned about how I’ve never noticed I’m uneven. I have a regular doctor’s appointment in two and a half weeks, so I will be asking about that FOR SURE.
I never knew I looked this:
Either of these would be okay, though:
GOATLING!
Derby Day!
I tried the 14 Hands red blend today because they had a Kentucky Derby label, and since today was Derby Day, how could I resist? It wasn’t half-bad, actually. Not my favorite, but totally drinkable.
I picked Whitmore as my winner. BAD choice, guys. He came in LAST. I would say second to last, but the actual last horse didn’t even finish, so technically, my guy was last. I switched to Whitmore at the last minute because of the jockey (Victor Espinoza, who rode Triple Crown winner American Pharoah last year). My original choice was Oscar Nominated, who only finished two ahead of Whitmore, so I wouldn’t have won anything no matter what. Not a good day for the betting version of me. Luckily, the betting version of me doesn’t see much action. She’s not lucky.
More news of the mildly strange
I saw a girl with a rabbit on a leash today. She and her rabbit were in the park, and the rabbit was nibbling contentedly on clover or thistle or something that was not grass but was green and grew in the ground. And I assume the rabbit was content. It wasn’t trembling. Not trembling is content for rabbits, right?
The girl was dressed exactly like you’d expect a girl with a rabbit on a leash to be dressed. She was wearing a floppy hat, a skirt, sandals, and a light crocheted cardigan. (I ran by her twice, there and back, so I noticed. Also, RABBIT ON A LEASH.) Something she was wearing (the sweater or the skirt) had daisies on it. And she had long curly hair. That’s the girl who takes her rabbit for a walk.
I also met a 10-week-old chocolate lab puppy named Rory (SO cute), but there’s nothing out of the ordinary about that. The puppy was also on a leash.
News of the mildly strange
As I was walking back from the park today, I noticed a woman walking a dog in front of me. The dog was in a harness, on a leash. Nothing remotely unusual. They were, I don’t know, 50 feet in front of me, and the woman was carrying something in her arms. I was far enough away not to see any details, but it was about the size of a small child or a baby.
I assumed it was a small child or a baby.
After she crossed the street, she stooped to put down whatever was in her arms, and I could see it was a big gray cat. It wasn’t wearing a collar, it wasn’t on a leash, and it didn’t follow her down the sidewalk, even though she kept looking back at it.
Was it her cat? Was she taking it for a walk? Did she expect it to follow her home? Maybe she knew it would find its way eventually. If it wasn’t her cat, did she pick it up thinking it was a stray? If so, why put it back down and leave it? Was she just helping it across the street, like you might help a senior citizen?
TANGENT: I have never seen anyone help a senior citizen across the street in real life. Do people really do that? In the movies, it’s just boy scouts or characters proving they’re nice people.
If the lady was helping a stray cat across the street, how did she know it needed help? And if it needed help across the street, it seems cold to just leave it behind after that. Of course, it looked pretty healthy and whole to me.
I didn’t stick around to see what happened, so maybe it WAS hers and maybe it DID follow her down the sidewalk after a suitable waiting period to show it was capable of doing things on its own, damn it, and it doesn’t need anyone’s help.
Still. Who carries a cat around at the park? Unless she thought it was the zombie apocalypse…it all makes sense now.
Corey presented this video as proof that he could have caused his little sisters more harm. Congrats, Cor. You’re not the world’s worst older brother.
More apartment issues
When we got back from PA Sunday night, we walked into a very cold apartment. We checked the thermostat and found the screen blank. Thinking it might be a dead battery, we took it off the wall, but it doesn’t take batteries, apparently. The heat was off (it had been warm up until we left Friday evening), so we tried turning it on. Nothing – no screen, no heat. I texted our landlady (and let her know we could get through the night), and she said the HVAC guys would come over in the morning. We threw an extra comforter on the bed and made it through the night alive. Getting out of bed the next morning was next to impossible, though.
The guy arrived around 11am Monday and camped out in front of our bathroom door (the closet with the furnace is right outside the bathroom) for several hours. Thankfully, he went in and out of the apartment a few times so we could use the bathroom. It’s awkward to use the bathroom when someone is sitting right outside the door, you know?
He managed to get the emergency heat turned on later in the afternoon, and the place slowly warmed up, but we stayed bundled through to bedtime. The guy had to come back yesterday (Tuesday) because he wasn’t prepared to run a new wire on Monday. Apparently, some animal chewed through the wire. Our landlady thinks it was the squirrel they caught. That was the first I’d heard of a squirrel.
Let me back up.
I spent three days in VA for work the first week in March. When I got back Thursday night (almost three weeks ago), John was standing in the kitchen, peering intently at the ceiling over the sink, and he beckoned me in and shushed me. We could hear scratching in the ceiling. From something big. I pictured raccoons. John said he heard it both nights I was gone.
We let it go a couple of days, but whatever it was didn’t go away. We mostly heard it at night, sometimes all night long, and then one day our landlady appeared at our door. Our upstairs neighbor called her because he saw mice in his apartment, and she wanted to know if we had mice. I told her I hadn’t seen ANY animals, certainly not mice, but I’d heard scratching. I told her it sounded bigger than a mouse, but I don’t think she believed me. She set out some traps upstairs, apparently caught a mouse or two (and our upstairs neighbor came down one day to get John’s help with one), and the scratching did go away for a few days. Then it came back.
I guess our landlady called the right people this time, and I guess they caught a squirrel (who apparently chewed through the wires to our thermostat). I know we haven’t heard the scratching for at least a week, so maybe that’s all over. And in less than a week, living in this apartment, with its leaks and scratching rodents and no heat and terrible, uncontrollable water pressure, will be over, too.
It hasn’t been ALL bad, but we are over this apartment.
RESIST
I have seen a lot of cute kittens on the internet lately (more than usual, I should say – kittens OWN the internet), and I keep having these short-lived lapses of judgment. I do NOT want a kitten. I do NOT want cat hair everywhere, and I do NOT want a litter box in an apartment, and with all the moving, I do NOT want the added hassle of finding places that allow cats, and I most certainly do NOT want anything to complicate leaving the country (which we are SO totally still going to do).
Do I sound like I mean it? Because I really REALLY mean it. Except for a few seconds now and then, when I see an adorable kitten snuggling up to someone (or some owl – you must have seen THOSE adorable pictures, right?). As long as those few seconds don’t turn into a few days, I’m safe. Right? NO KITTENS.
Who needs normal? What IS normal?
I know that Portland is supposed to be weird (I’ve seen Portlandia), but I hadn’t really heard that about the rest of the state. I suppose it stands to reason that everywhere else might be a bit quirky. That was confirmed one of our first mornings here. We went to Eugene for breakfast (Off the Waffle) and to check out the area, and on our walk from the car to the restaurant, we passed a street musician playing the recorder. That’s a little weird (you don’t see a lot of recorder-players around DC), but not totally off the wall. The guy had a little animal crate next to him and a double pet dish with food and water in front of his feet, and a CAT eating out of the dish. No leash or anything. Just a cat eating at the feet of a dude playing the recorder on the sidewalk in downtown Eugene.
I like Eugene.
It was dark, so I couldn’t get pictures
The other night we were out by the water, and I was watching the ducks. (I like the ducks.) There was this one duck just floating in place. He wasn’t paddling, he wasn’t fishing, he was just sitting there on top of the water.
What was he doing? What was he thinking?
Then another duck paddled up to him, and off they went down the docks together. So what was he doing? Waiting for the other duck. And what was he thinking? Probably “Where the #$*& is the other duck?”
Focus-pulling
Despite the title of this reddit post, I focused on the llama in the background first. Then I jumped a little. Then I sang a little.
Suddenly Emu:
Don’t fence me in
Yesterday, I thought I was going to have to return a horse to its owner. The trail I run on (when I run, which has not been all that often lately) is paved, but there’s a gravel path that runs along a lot of it. It has more ups and downs, and I don’t usually run on it, but you can see it and the people on it for the most part. Yesterday, I was running along a stretch where there’s an animal hospital on the far side of the gravel path. I glanced over to check for horses (they have a small fenced arena), and hey – I saw one. Outside the fence. It was on the gravel path. BY ITSELF. No bridle, no saddle, just a horse, happily munching on some grass. There was a woman heading in to the animal hospital when I got there, so I checked with her.
“Excuse me – did you know there’s a horse loose over there?”
“Yeah, he belongs to the neighbors. They do that sometimes.”
“Do we need to tell them?”
“Nah. They probably know.”
Okay, then. I guess the neighbors felt the horse could be trusted not to wander off… He certainly paid no attention to me as I went by. It’s still weird. I live in suburbia, not farm country. This horse was not far off from standing on a sidewalk in front of a house in some development. I wouldn’t mind living in farm or horse country, but horses don’t exactly roam free out there, either. Fences, people.
