Making It Up As I Go Along #464

Writing Outdoors
Trying to write outside today. With sunny skies and warm temperatures, the outdoors call.

But the distractions are so much out here. First little birds chasing each other from tree to tree. I’m sitting here with laptop atop lap and a little red bird sits in a branch, no more than twelve feet away, trying to coax his wife to be out to join him. A load of bird gibberish comes out as song and then the two fly off across the lot to another tree… only to return in front of me a few minutes later… starting the show again.

A wasp buzzes by. Sharing my attached Adirondack chairs with me for a bit. Me sitting in one and he crawling over the other. I’m reminded of the article I read about bees and wasps. How a bee will leave you alone if you leave it… but a wasp… well… wasps are mean spirited and will have a go at you if you look at it funny.

I remember my wasp encounters. One as a kid in Victoria, feeling a pinch upon my wrist and looking down at this great insect that seemed to entirely engulf me as a giant watch, hiding my flesh with winged black and yellow. The pain and fear coming together to bring me terror.

Then another wasp which came at me on a hiking trail. And me with hands full, carrying a great found chunk of quartz… a chunk which sits, today, in my kitchen nook. But on that day, my sacrifice for claiming the quartz was to be unable to fend off the wasp attack. And my leg took on a stinging welt as a result. Less terror involved in this encounter… but annoyance.

And so I’m apprehensive of the wasp sharing my seat… and consider moving indoors… when he decides he’s had enough, and lifts off… buzzing away.

Fire trucks zip along Tenth Line Road… causing me to lift my head once again. And during my looking out there, over the grassy plain, a spot a great bird, ambling along within the grass.

From here, I can’t tell if it’s a heron spending some time away from the lake… or a wild turkey, too stupid to know what it’s doing in such a place. But either way it’s there… too far for a definitive identification.. .ambling in and out of view as it passes grass and mound.

The little red bird and it’s mate return… in and out again. And a bumble bee drifts over to the tree with them… looking happy to be in the sun and making me wish it was he, and not the wasp, who visited before.

With that, the wasp returns. It looks like he’s biting off bits of wood for a nest or sucking out some nourishment before flying back to his wasp brood.

Another bird comes to the little red bird tree. A bigger starling, or some such bird. Fresh from his time around the lake, as he flaps wet feathers dry and beaks some stragglers back into place. The red bird is annoyed and heads off… but quickly returns to sing his gibberish song, once the bigger guy is dry and moving along.

A robin combs the ground, poking for worms, and I’m drawn again to the area of that far off giant, hoping for a better look in order to ID the mystery.

To my left, the neighbours prepare lunch. Voices of mother and child coming out from their kitchen nook with music drifting from their kitchen radio. “In the Air Tonight” brings back teenage summers as it drifts into the summer air.

The red bird returns to his branch, chirping to get my attention. And I see it there, chirping with a beak full of twigs… before he and his lady fly off to the other side of the parking lot, I assume to do some work on a nest. He quickly returns empty beaked… and his chirping is much clearer without the muffle of twigs.

A beetle drops atop my computer… playing dead upon my scroll pad… hoping I don’t notice. And a couple wander by in the lot beneath me… bringing their dog to the same pond the bathing bird came back from some ten minutes ago.

And that’s why it’s hard to right your blog outside, on a warm summery day, during the May 24 weekend.


SATURDAY…
--- Quiet, rainy day at work. Unable to bring myself to doing a movie with Phil and Sarah tonight. It would be late and I’m on 5 hours sleep with day shift #2 coming tomorrow. By 8:30 tonight I’m already getting sleepy.

SUNDAY…
--- Another quiet one at work. Vancouver game tonight. Good one as they score two in the third to win 3-2.

MONDAY/TUESDAY…
--- Pretty typical night shifts. Physio before the shift on Monday… and gray and rain both days.

WEDNESDAY…
--- Up around 10:30… so afternoon nap will be likely. Again… gray, cool and rain. So not much to be done other than that nap.
--- Nap is had… followed by meeting up with Sarah to get some Wendy’s for supper… and the hockey game. Canucks win big San Jose play like idiots… and we get boobs on the TV (a girl flashing Ben Eager in the penalty box).

THURSDAY…
--- Physio and then a meeting at the bank. I walk to the bank… nice to go for a stroll. Groceries and some evening TV round out the day.

FRIDAY…
--- Lunch with Karl. It’s nice and warm today… about 25 degrees… so we eat on a patio and get some Dairy Queen on the way back.