Son, can you play me a memory?

I have of late had not just one song maddeningly lodged in my brain, but the entire oeuvre of Billy Joel* taking up valuable space there. Mainly this one** (why?) and Piano Man. So many thoughts about this song, which I've known by heart at least since junior high:

• What on earth is a "real estate novelist"?
• "Makin love to his tonic and gin" was like nails on a chalkboard to me, even when I was 12.
• As a kid I assumed being in the Navy for life was a much worse fate than never having time for a wife or becoming stuck as a bartender, unable to pursue your dreams of being a movie star.
• And finally, I wish I were a skilled cartoonist so I could draw my initial interpretation of "they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar."***

*Okay, okay, maybe not his whole opus.

**This way there be earworms.

***Think baguette in a Mason jar.

Rabbit rabbit

 

Once again, photo credit goes to Mark 🩷

If a black bear attacks, do not play dead

Who pooped in my raised bed? Who keeps digging in there, amongst the volunteer strawberry plants?*

"People are advised to play dead and lock their hands behind their neck...in the event of a grizzly bear attack. If a black bear attacks, do not play dead." —Amanda Holpuch in the New York Times

I replaced all the good bird seed with unshelled black sunflower seeds to send the soft-beaked starlings a subtle message: Fuck off, friends. They descend to peck vindictively at the remains of the suet. The crows visit to caw at me periodically throughout the day; they've trained me to toss peanuts into the yard on command.

A few days ago, I pulled into the Back Cove lot to get a look at a giant wire art installation — two huge egret heads against the blue sky. In the Subaru parked beside me, a man was calmly eating food with a fork as a woman in the passenger seat leaned out the open car door and vomited on the asphalt. When she was done, she closed the door and they both swigged from a bottle of mouthwash, swished for a long time, and then simultaneously opened their doors and spit on the ground.

The song my brain sings whilst I sit on my parents' fancy heated toilet seat in late June: hot seat in the summertime, to the tune of this.

“To kill an eel, seize it with a cloth and bang its head violently against a hard surface.” — Larousse Gastronomique, 1938

*I devised a torture-chamber-looking method of diverting the pooper that involves take-out chopsticks and skewers. Watch this space for DIY slug murder and powdery mildew abatement.

Rabbit rabbit

 

Flooded with gracious light

"Too busy" to write on this blorg. 

I keep intending to call my dancer friend, but unfortunately she is in Spain and it always seems to be midnight there. The fact that she slept through that fabulous comet chunk makes me feel a little better about the fact that I slept through the northern lights.

We are piecing our back yard back together, slowly slowly, after losing two huge, stately trees. It looks less like an empty rectangle, bleakly immense, than it did two weeks ago. There are birds, and a faded forsythia, and bleeding hearts, forget-me-nots, rascally strawberries everywhere, violets, lilies-of-the-valley snuck over from next door. A bed of herbs growing inches overnight, especially after rain. We bought a serviceberry we'll pick up next week, and we're contemplating a dogwood. We're planning a pea stone patio, another garden bed, planning and planning as we sit on the dirty back steps with our morning coffee.

My "notes": 

Sweaty season commences, as evidenced by how everyone in Hannaford smells today.

"To pay attention is to love everything. To see the future as brightness." - Sarah Manguso

"It was early summer; everything was fresh and fair. The grass was green green; the sky was blue, immensely blue; the world was flooded with gracious light." - William Steig

Agree with these synonyms.

Be careful out there. I love you.

Rabbit rabbit!

 

Both ways is the only way I want it

O April, cruelest month, with nary a word a-written! My "notes" show much grousing this month about this and that, like so:

Say what you will about astrological nonsense, but Mercury is in retrograde and so far

• Broken refrigerator (repair ETA 4/10)
• Broken willow tree 
• Second ice storm in two weeks

In related spam

Now that's all in the past, and while there are no doubt plenty of bad news that I am about to hear, May is imminent and road trips have been taken and family members visited and a whole new distracting and miraculous season is unfurling.

It's squirty ice cream season!!

Also in my "notes" this month:

Me (watching an NCAA sportsball game): "What's Iowa's mascot?"

Mark: "I don't know — a stick of butter?"

Oh to see the squirrels 

sliding down the wet bird feeder poles

In the April rain

"All roads lead toward the same blocked intersection." — Mountain Goats

"Stars without light hold the others up." — Fanny Howe

"I almost forgot my amuse bouche!" — my Mom, eating a mini Reeses peanut butter cup