Weekending

My latest interview was in an overlarge room, too far away from the panel of interviewers to charm or alienate them with my scary bug jewelry. I stopped at Walmart on the way home, and it was a good thing this happened after the interview, because it sucked my brain out my ears and replaced it with something like a bath loofah. When I was a kid, my mother and I once stopped in the aisle to listen closely to the Christmas muzak playing over the speakers, and stared at each other in horror when we heard the actual lyrics, "Walking in a Walmart wonderlaaaand." Now those words play in a distant, grainy loop in my head while I wander in unsettled confusion from section to section, unable to remember what it was I had hoped to find, and unable to articulate what is so very, very wrong with the way the light and space and bodies are both expanding and shrinking as I move through them.

Walking in a Walmart wonderlaaaaand.

Run. Run.

So that was a mistake I am already forgetting.

Birds again

Three of the chicks have been returned to their delinquent mother on the school grounds. One of them, however, was horrified to be left in the care of what was obviously a chicken, and ran into the fourth grade classroom looking for its people. It came home in a cat carrier, with a feather duster crammed alongside pretending to be a companion. 

The chick was not fooled.

So we've spent most of the weekend outside with a chicken.

The dove is not a fan of the chick, because it climbed her and rode her like a pony. She flounced off to sunbathe, which, on a bird, looks a lot like dying. They get out in the sun, and then suddenly keel over, go limp, and sprawl  with their wings out.

People do this, too, come to it. Evidence against UFOs is the fact that they are not trawling the beaches, sweeping up limp bodies in a panic to rescuscitate them.

While this was all happening, I sewed a couple more quilt blocks.

And then I pestered my mother into writing me another story to illustrate. With anthropomorphic animals in little outfits. "Power of the SEEECRET," I hollered from downstairs. "Power of the simple REQUEEEST," she called back.

So that is all happening. And beer brewing. And meatballs. I'm a fan of weekends.