We quiver inside our shocked fur

I've seen a half dozen hummingbirds in the last two weeks, enticed by my prolific red bee balm, one of which hovered in the air like a little AI creation, 18 inches from my face, and I swear looked me in the eye.

Oh the dinosaur blue jays, a crow mama and teenage baby calling for peanuts, dozens of sparrows startled out of the rain-dampened grass when I open the screen door, little goldfinches with their shockingly bright feather jackets, a woodpecker diligently working on the remains of the suet (previously ravaged, loudly, by starlings). 

When I look at the garden I see the holes where we need to plant more flowers (tis the season of yellow and red — I need more blue! more purple and pink! more white!). But if I list everything in bloom I'm stunned by it all. Lucky, lucky, lucky.

Especially this past (long) weekend, when Stella and Ben visited and indulged us on an arduous canoe paddle and a wild and stormy boat ride out to Eastern Egg Rock to get a really good look at the puffins nesting there. We also spotted seals, porpoises, and many seabirds. In return, we indulged them with a perfect Red's Dairy Freeze score (4 for 4 nights). Plus there were lobster rolls, bocce, board games, an Eastern Prom food truck picnic, bubble tea, and used bookstores. And the back garden fauna was satisfying too: a rabbit* (first rabbit we've seen in our yard in 25 years); two skunks, flaunting their white-striped tails at twilight (we all yelled SKUNK!!); lots of squirrels.

Seen, but not captured on film, no matter how hard I tried:

Flashing sign at the corner of State and Congress: SNOW HAULING

Alarming the tourists since 1999:

Mark, to Ben and Stella, in line for the puffin cruise: "Did you hear about that humpback whale that flipped a boat over the other day?"

Up top we saw so many puffins!

Below deck there were bodies on the floor.

*I think it's a New England Cottontail

Rabbit rabbit

La mer, la mer, toujours recommencėe!

It was evening all afternoon

Don't you love when you're walking at night and the people in the houses have lights on, and they're moving around, doing things that you can see in glimpses?

I still can't quite believe my luck: I get to live on this pretty planet, within driving distance of this ocean.

NaBloPoMo

Or something like that. It's November! I turned 50 and lived to tell about it. I am going to attempt to write a little something every day, even though no one reads blogs anymore. This blog is twelve and a half years old.

My routine is all askew, thanks to Gus and his hurt leg. He is wobbly, and most days I walk him slowly around the neighborhood while Mark adventures with Clover in the woods. I need to look at the ocean soon, though.


"I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall--
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do."

- Mary Oliver, of course

10

“That’s another great thing about getting older. Your life is written on your face.” - Frances McDormand, 60, one of my heroes.

Also, Pause by Mary Ruefle, mentioned in the article above.

I love reading wise words about growing older.


This morning we looked and looked for the beautiful red fox we saw yesterday on Mackworth. We've done the Mackworth loop walk hundreds and hundreds of time (it's as much part of my routine as brushing my teeth or setting my alarm for 6:30), but we've never seen a fox there before. This guy was big and fluffy and magnificent, with his head held high (unlike the smaller, low-slung gray Oakdale fox). We looked at him and he looked at us. He only trotted away when we moved slightly closer and Gus barked. He looked like the fox I follow on Instagram.

Sometimes she snuggles.

Hey, we went camping last weekend! We drove farther north and east than we've ever been in Maine, so far up the coast our phones got confused and thought we were on Atlantic time.

I ended up with the warmer (borrowed) sleeping bag, and Mark got chilly and we both woke up from the fact that we were basically sleeping on the ground, and we were late getting to the camp ground in the first place and had to pitch the tent in the dark (of course). BUT, despite all that, it was so much fun. It's been so long since I've camped — we always talked about doing it with the kids, but somehow 25 years went by, and we never did it. I love the food preparation (hotdogs on sticks over the fire) and coffee drinking parts of camping, the smells and slowed pace and lack of screens, etc. And this was such an idyllic spot, right by the water, facing east for the sunrise. And both dogs were angelic, seriously. They snuggled up to us at night in the tent, and were happy to be tethered to the picnic table or to walk on leashes around the (empty) campground otherwise. We hiked too, and make great use of all our (mostly borrowed) camping gear.

Iceland

I woke up this morning thinking of Iceland (a place I've never been, in a world full of places I've never been). I was wondering, "Are there any oceans in Iceland? Or...just lakes?" and hazily realizing I had been picturing it, just then, as a tiny planet--not an island country (which is, duh, sitting in the middle of the ocean. At the junction of two oceans, in fact).

And then walking around Mackworth this morning, I admired the gold seaweed carpets on the little beaches, and imagined that's what Iceland (the planet) looks like.

Flora and fauna of Iceland

The specialized atmosphere makes it possible to swim in the sky.

The friendly Icelandic sea swallows will land on your shoulders and arms if you stand very still.

Unstable Mass of Blood and Foam

Weather report: cold and bright with a 70 percent chance of sparkles.



I have done this test on my self and learned that I am not very evolved. I am basically a lemur.



My self vs myself. Also, why would you say this: "people like myself" instead of "people like me"? I am trying hard not to be such a prescriptivist, truly. I think it's a question of aesthetics as much as anything. Ah, the lonely life of a grammar guerilla.

What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!

It's chilly out there--for comparison, here is the Atlantic Ocean, steaming like a sauna. The water was so beautiful this morning, sending tendrils of smoke into the cold air, surrounding the islands and lighthouses you can see when you stand on the East End Beach. Gus is in love with a little spaniel, maybe a Brittany? He wrestles her with gentle, devoted enthusiasm and guards her fiercely against the attentions of other dogs. Today she wore a sweater with a squirrel on it.

Isaac has been volunteering at the Shack this week, lending his help with the filmmaking intensive he took several times in high school. Today it was so cold that they canceled school in the city (some of the buses wouldn't start at 6am).

Zoë studies Sanskrit every day, works on Kannada and grad school applications, and puts off plunging into her thesis. Last night we went to see Wild, which we both liked--I enjoyed it a bit more than she did, if by "enjoyed" you mean "bawled." Today she is getting acupunctured, at my insistence. I hope she loves it as much as I do!

Work on our kitchen is at a temporary standstill, as things like eating biscuits and drinking coffee and taking chilly walks and playing games and doing billable work seem to be taking precedence right now. Actually, Mark and I hastily installed a section of backer board (where the subway tile will go) the other day, then stepped back and realized it was completely crooked. We have to slow down and do it again, slow down and put up the rest of it, paint the moulding, install the moulding, and then get to tiling. And then, and only then, will we start contemplating CABINETS and COUNTERTOP and a new SINK, perhaps!

Seven

I get to live in a place where the sky comes in colors like this! That stripe of blue, that blue. The silver sky, the silver-gray ocean. There's a lighthouse in this picture, for heaven's sake.

And yet, politically it's feeling yucky here in Maine--here in this country I suppose. Assuming Vermont stays Vermonty, with single payer health care coming and everything, my dreamy browsing of little farm houses has moved in that direction. It's kind of my second choice, aesthetically, of the Perfect Place.

Like this house, for example:

But mostly I'm trying to be here, right now, where I am.