Quiet Time

It’s qui­et now. Shel­ley and I are the only ones here, and the neigh­bor­hood kids aren’t out­side play­ing yet. I’m sit­ting here look­ing out my win­dow at the tree grow­ing just off our porch. I love that tree. It is most of what I see, instead of the next apart­ment build­ing or the park­ing lot. We may hang up a bird­house there to invite more winged visitors.

We played D&D, our “home game” Rose & Crown, last night. word­can­dlemage has been in it from time to time, which isn’t odd at all since it’s real­ly a con­tin­u­a­tion of the Stars & Garters cam­paign that end­ed a year or so back. curiousmay9 joined us for the first time, play­ing a char­ac­ter who has been an NPC in the past. She got too much sun yes­ter­day and was worn out, so she cud­dled up under a quilt on the couch and looked very cute for the most part. LJ-less J joined us for the first time with a new char­ac­ter, sim­ply because he was des­per­ate to play again this week­end and the biweek­ly game he’s in was­n’t happening.

It was fun, although word­can­dlemage and I are so used to each oth­er and our char­ac­ter’s rela­tion­ship is so set that it was rather odd to have oth­er peo­ple involved. Not bad, just different.

We had chick­en cor­don bleu for din­ner, and word­can­dlemage turned mashed pota­toes into some­thing far bet­ter than I’m accus­tomed to. curiousmay9 brought fresh straw­ber­ries and a cake to eat them on, and there’s not so much as a seed of the straw­ber­ries left. They were delicious!

Shel­ley def­i­nite­ly appre­ci­at­ed the expand­ed staff and has had much scritch­ing. She was­n’t so hap­py about get­ting her claws trimmed, so only 3 of 4 paws actu­al­ly got done—but that’s progress!

I enjoyed show­ing the “new Mac switch” com­mer­cials, espe­cial­ly the Jesus one, to curiousmay9 this morn­ing. She’s an avowed Mac user, so she real­ly loved them.

J went home, and the oth­er two rode across town with curiousmay9 to get her truck for the mov­ing of fur­ni­ture. I sent off anoth­er box of stuff we aren’t using that she will find useful—yay! And more trash went out. We’re get­ting there, truly!

Oh, there’s a female car­di­nal on the bird­feed­er! She seems a bit wary as if she’s not entire­ly sure this smor­gas­bord (there are 3 feed­ers, all with dif­fer­ent con­tents) is for real. As I recall, though, car­di­nals are large­ly ground feed­ers. I need to remem­ber to put out a dish of seed on the ground for them. I think she’s get­ting plen­ty that’s been lit­tered about by oth­er crit­ters, though. And she cer­tain­ly knocked off more when she launched from the feed­er on which she had perched—did she do that on pur­pose? I think she might have.

I haven’t seen any squir­rels since we’ve been here, but I have seen chip­munks. Not on the porch yet, but I fig­ure they’ll come even­tu­al­ly. The sheer num­ber of chil­dren who play right out there is going to lessen the amount of wildlife that comes to the feed­ers, though. And I don’t have water out there yet—a source of clean, fresh water real­ly does draw many of them bet­ter than food.

Shelly loves to sit here in front of the win­dows, too, watch­ing the wildlife. There isn’t near­ly as much of it as at our old place, and I doubt there ever will be—but we’re doing all we can to draw them here. I do wish there was a way to screen in the porch and put the feed­ers just out­side the screens. Or, more accu­rate­ly, I wish the apart­ment com­plex would allow us to do so. I know we could do it, quite simply—I just don’t think they’d be hap­py with us for doing so. Shel­ley could go out for fresh air on a screened porch, and I know she miss­es that.

I want some of those long, nar­row planters that are designed to sit along (and clamp to, prefer­ably) the rail­ing of a porch or deck. I need to find some­thing pret­ty and fra­grant that would grow year-round that way, though, or per­haps I could just rotate what’s out there at dif­fer­ent parts of the year. I’m very fond of plants right now. Herbs would be nice, or flow­ers. Or both. I don’t know what I want, exact­ly, as I know very lit­tle about plants and gar­den­ing. Of course, I don’t know much about birds, either, but have learned much more about what dif­fer­ent sorts like in the last few years.

I haven’t done my morn­ing pages today or yes­ter­day, which has me feel­ing a bit off-kil­ter. Yes­ter­day I bounced out of bed to start work­ing and did­n’t even think about them until lat­er. Today there were guests here, and I did­n’t want to be rude. Tomor­row, def­i­nite­ly! Oh—I just real­ized that I did­n’t do an artist’s date this week. Not so good. Ah well—I for­give myself for it.