to the blood

The summer is winding down. Already. There is kindergarten paperwork to chase, school supplies to purchase, orientations to attend, rotting lychees to rake up, new rakes to buy after snapping the old one on rotting lychees, and also I busted myself in the face with a box of cheerios. Kind of hard. Split my lip. I think I am only alive because I have a desk job. If I had been a lumberjack, I'd have died trying to catch a chainsaw with my foot by now.

Meanwhile, Plucky the Terrible Terror (our chicken) has emerged from her weeks of brooding and she has unleashed a plague of bird mites upon us. I've been wrestling her down to spray her butt with bird butt spray, and then stripping off my infected clothes next to the outdoor washing machine and running for the outdoor shower to decontaminate. So far, the new neighbors have not seen me do this - which is maybe too bad because it might deter them from letting their kid scream across the street, "HEY ARE YOU GOING TO INVITE ME OVER OR WHAT" while we are unloading groceries. Or from sending texts while I'm cooking dinner that say, "Hey he's really upset and crying, why can't he come play in your yard?" Folks, I don't have to supervise your kid because he screams. That is actually a reason I do NOT have to supervise him. I am cooking. And painting. And wrestling chickens. And stripping off mite-infested clothes in the backyard. Shush now.

At a push from my mother and our bronze sculpture instructor/longtime friend, I'm working on a textile-themed painting for an upcoming show. It's just Gavin wrapped in a knitted blanket on the couch, but that ticks off two 2018 goals: proper portrait of the kid; entry into art competition. I've got to get through the whole family in the next few months, and stop getting sidetracked by cats and horcruxes and flowers.

Another goal: get passport. This one is tricky, because in the 1980s you could come and go between the US and Canada pretty freely, and dual citizens were just kind of shrugged over and waved along, but at some point that all changed and citizenship certificates for foreign births became required, which HAHA I DON'T HAVE. "So just go for it and declare you're Canadian," my mother said. "You are trying to get me deported," I replied. "Meeeh," she said, reassuringly. So I'm going to show up at the passport office with my Canadian birth certificate and my American social security card and see where the cards fall. If I wind up at a holding facility in Vancouver, whoops. Will report. Maybe.