Inquisitive music

I am so delighted by what happens when you take an elderly news article in the form of a PDF and you open it in Google Docs. You get...a ransom note.

What else is delighting me, you ask? Well, I'll tell you: the way Netflix captions describe music:

More from my internet investigations:

No thank you, I don't think I will watch. 

LinkedIn inspo. 

Not to be confused. 

You thought you knew all you needed to know about safety pins.

When you were a young and callow fellow

Running on the beach the other morning with Mark and Zoë, who outpaced me, and Clover, who ran back and forth between the three of us, I wished I had my phonecamera. There was thick fog, and it was lovely seeing them gradually vanish into it in the distance. Plus, plovers everywhere, the water, the dunes. But it's awkward to fit a phone in the pocket of my running pants* (pockets are full of empty poop bags and dog treats anyway), and freeing to be free of it for a while.

We ran and walked and ran and so did Clover, stopping to sniff other dogs occasionally and run in circles with them. We stretched afterward on the sand and breathed in the fog and the sound of the waves and gulls, lucky lucky lucky.

Today, my favorite thing was the poodle with the mohawk. And my least favorite thing was the guy on Congress Street with the sign that said

MEDIA

WHORES

LIARS

COVID

HOAX

*Mostly I walk in them.

Rabbit rabbit.

 

This one has a little star

A fish misadventure* happened here yesterday. Isaac had great plans to grill two whole fishes stuffed with lemon and garlic. The fishes, in their plastic bag from the fish market, felt so very very heavy. And that was because they were full of their internal organs.** As I made a big salad and tried to pay very little attention, Isaac read to me from the "how to clean a fish" website: "First, subdue the fish. Knock it out, and make sure it's dead." Later, after the operation had moved to the back yard, he came in for a large spoon: "I have to scoop out its liver," he said sadly. Mark helped. The yard is still littered with scales that look like shiny sequins. Neither of them wanted to eat fish after they had 65% finished with one of them. We felt the terrible waste of two fishy lives, but said a prayer and double wrapped their bodies and lay them to rest in the garbage.

Then we ordered pizza. 

*This reminds me of something I wasn't involved in but that still haunts me, the story of an unwanted gift of live lobsters and what happens when you put live lobsters in the wrong sort of water.

**Isaac has bought and cooked whole fish from this same market several times before, and they had been cleaned and gutted.

Let the world dream otherwise

In line at Trader Joe's after the rain had suddenly stopped and the sun trumpeted out from behind the clouds, I thought Ohhhh, I am being a person who complains about wearing a mask, only I'm doing it silently inside my own head. Hoo boy, it was hot inside that mask with my breath all steamy and exiting in little puffs I could feel on my chin and neck and cheeks. I felt woozy and suddenly remembered that I'd dreamed the night before of fainting and afterward being cheered up by my friends, who brought me to the tour bus of a famous musician I didn't recognize, though I anticipated being able to impress someone with the story of eating Cheetos with him.

Ahead of me in line was a sort of punk-rockabilly guy with hair shaved on the sides and tattoos and rolled-up black jean shorts and boots, chatting at length (from six feet away, masked) with an older lady in polyester and a slight hunch in her back. White hair, animated body language, both of them were laughing and chatting and smiling (smizing). I loved them.

Beside me in the line parallel to mine was a 70-something couple, the woman talking so loudly I thought for sure I'd get some good Overheard material. I did, eventually, but mostly she lost her train of thought or forgot the punchline of story after story. They started out so promising! "So she says to me, she says, 'I'm okay with babies, babies are fine, but when...Now what did she say? I can't remember.'"

Reader, I did eventually make it into Trader Joe's. I also visited the library (or, the table in the doorway of the library, where, by appointment, you can now pick up books you've requested) and the post office. Three places in one day!

Among the wildflowers

Gus died this week.

A woman jogged past my house yesterday, paused at one of our enormous overgrown beach rose bushes, pulled a single pink petal off, popped it in her mouth, and jogged off down the sidewalk.

Sweet little neighbor boys made us sympathy cards. "I'M SORRY CLOVER" said one of them.

It feels like he's still here somewhere. It feels like he's behind the forsythia bush, in front of the fireplace, under the porch. 

My new hobby is buying flowers and planting them in the many spots around the yard where he'd taken to spending most of his time over the last couple of months. That dog loved having a back yard he could defend with his loud barking and relax in all day, moving from one shady spot to another and even into the night if we'd let him. You could see him glowing slightly, settled in the middle of the garden behind the coreopsis or curled around a lily plant. 

Chamomile everywhere.

I'm not sure this spot is sunny enough for daisies, but it was sunny enough for Gus.

This was his usual spot, behind these yellow beauties. I think I need to get two more astilbes to fill in the dirt patch he created here, but this one really reminds me of him.

Rabbit rabbit