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| ::: ::: journal entries: ::: ::: :::
check out: I am so going to miss reading this guy's journal. Doug! I'll be hoping for a comeback, my man. artifact:
Do you happen to remember me yammering on about how we had bees in the ceiling of our bathroom? (It's okay if you don't. I even bore myself sometimes.) I forgot all about them, until this was found when the workers tore off the roof over that area of the house.
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| Sunday, March 12, 2006 On Saturday morning I was heating Riley's bottle and I looked out the kitchen window to see a seagull perched on top of the giant dumpster that's living in our driveway. While I was looking, another seagull flew out of the dumpster's innards with something clenched in its beak. Then a massive black crow flapped in and landed next to the first seagull. All we needed was a buzzard to complete the picture, really. The dumpster is there to contain all the junk that's generated during the remodel: wood, glass, siding. I'm not sure what attracted the seagulls - leftover lunch remnants from the workers, I guess - but unless you live on a beach, there is just something gross about having seagulls in your driveway. Gulls near water? Oceany! Gulls on a dumpster in your front yard? Landfill-y. I informed JB about our seagull visitors, and he - Well, now. What do you think JB did? WWJBD? 1. Researched animal totems to learn what the seagull represents spiritually, composed poem about Suquamish sacred bird, performed interpretive dance to encourage gulls' nesting, gently laid out scraps of food. Right. I have to admit, it was a hell of a good shot. Now, don't go getting your feathers in a bunch, the BB gun works by pumping it with air, you can pump it several times to build pressure and shoot a BB through a fence or whatever, or you can pump it just once to use much less force. The seagull received a one-pump BB, which didn't wound it, but sent the gull packing in a hurry. We haven't seen any birds hanging out on the dumpster since then, either. From an efficiency point of view I don't know why all gardeners don't pack air guns - fuck scarecrows, shoot 'em and let Darwin sort 'em out. (Oh, I'm just kidding. Mostly.) (And yes, of course we are careful with the BB gun: we keep it in Riley's crib. For safety.) So, seagulls! That reminds me of two things: SEAGULL THING THE FIRST Years ago when JB's brother Joe was a teenager; he was working during the summer for the school system doing yard maintenance. One day his crew stopped for lunch in a field where some young kids were playing soccer, and while they were sitting there a seagull made off with Joe's sandwich. In irritation, Joe threw a screwdriver at the gull, never imagining it would actually hit the bird, but some freakish trajectory sent the tool end over end and then - shhhtunk! - right into the gull's back. So the seagull is running around with a fucking screwdriver stuck in its back between the wings. It's making a bunch of noise and generally freaking out, as you might imagine, and the little kids playing soccer are starting to take notice. Joe panics, and all he can think to do is to put the bird out of its misery as quickly as possible, and the way he knows how to do this - having learned the technique from duck hunting - is to take hold of the bird's head and whip its body around in a fast snapping motion that breaks the neck. Picture a field full of children in the midst of a happy soccer game, and suddenly their innocent play is interrupted by a sweaty guy who is doing something decidedly strange with a seagull - a seagull with a screwdriver gorily protruding from its back, mind you. "Man," Joe says heavily when he gets to this part of the story. "A bunch of them started crying like hell." You know when you get in over your head in a situation, and any attempt you make to extricate yourself just makes things worse? Whenever I think of that sort of thing, I remember Joe and the seagull. The scene is perfectly rendered in my mind: Joe, frantically whirling the gull around and around like a lasso, the saucer-eyed children whimpering in fear, the sense of doom that doubtlessly descended upon him as he realized that as far as advantageous exit strategies were concerned, he was well and truly fucked. SEAGULL THING THE SECOND JB and I were at a nearby mall a few months ago, when taking Riley outside of the house was still somewhat of a novelty. We were in the food court drinking Starbucks and generally reveling in being somewhere other than our living room, and I noticed a woman nearby with a baby. I asked JB if he could guess how old the baby was, and while we were watching, the woman picked up the baby and held her (I think it was a girl) upright, her tiny head peeping over the woman's shoulder. Just as JB said "I don't know, same age as Riley?" the baby unloaded a giant yarp of whitish spitup, all down the back of the woman's shirt. We froze. "We should go tell her," said JB. "I bet she notices," I said. We waited. She didn't notice, and in fact began to pack up her belongings to leave, with the glop still spread down her back. "Well," I said. "Maybe we -" Before I could finish, the woman picked up an expensive-looking jacket ("Oh no," breathed JB) and slipped it on, right over the barf. "I have to leave RIGHT NOW," said JB, and we hurried away, wincing - and, I'm embarrassed to admit, snickering helplessly. "My god," JB told me later. "That looked like seagull shit." Karmically speaking, I don't think we took the high road there. SEAGULL THING THE THIRD Dude, there is no seagull thing the third. Really, this entry has focused entirely too much on seagulls as is. Instead, I have some questions for you, O Clever People: • In our new bathroom we'll have a standalone shower. I would love to have this tiled, but it seems like tile is super expensive - especially glass tile, the kind I really like. Is there such a thing as pretty, affordable tile (it's about 90 square feet), and just how hard is do-it-yourself-tiling? ::: Recent photos:
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