Absence and Presence

this morning

I'm grateful for the honest question: Is it still really painful being without him? (Answer: It's horrible.)
I'm grateful for absence of the question. For just the being. For just the doing.
I'm grateful for the birds I see on my morning walk and how the sky looks each particular day as the sun rises.

the same clouds, reflected in the water with two bufflehead ducks

Below are some photos from earlier in the week:

Coots. I think I had some fun with filters here. But maybe not.

Mallard Hang-Out

Grebes. Maybe grebes and coots. I can't focus with my iPhone worth a damn.

Birds, Bullshit, Sunshine, and Santa

It's a beautiful day full of birds and sunshine here in Pillville. The buffleheads are buffle-ing. the hummingbirds are hummering. My mother's bruises are transforming from purple to green. She's busily pinning out her snowflakes and starching them.

Bufflehead ducks wintering here from the far north

Hummingbird at our kitchen window

The one-armed snowflake maker at work

I see the same look of concentration here in Vermeer's famous painting The Lacemaker

And me? In just a bit the nurse who does the intake for the caregiving agency will arrive. Better than Santa and his eight tiny reindeer, if you ask me. I spent all morning trying to log into my mom's credit union accounts--let's just shorten that story and let me say that experience made big banks look really, really good. It took weeks for one of credit unions to really fess up that the problem was on their end. They had to add my i.p. address so I could log on. Whaaaat? And the other lost the Power of Attorney paperwork and would not speak to me since my mom could not understand the person on the phone who was hell-bent on verifying her identity. Oops. I didn't make the story short, did I? But I feel better now. Thanks.

And I'd like to feel even better, so let me just remind the great Interwebs and everyone out there that here under the GREATEST HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IN THE WORLD (cough, cough)  Medicare does not cover dental work, eye glasses, hearing aids, or custodial care. I feel fabulous now. Thanks.

My antidote to that bullshit is going to be Christmas lights. Everywhere.

"I'm in it for the endolphin rush" --quote from Postcards from the Edge

Dolphins are too hard too hard to photograph. So here's a pair of terns. It looked like an argument.  

The beach this morning walk yielded many dolphins (many of them babies) twirling out of the waves, and a pair of body surfing sea lions. Somehow that wasn't enough for me. The day devolved into anxiety, and I suppose it was a good reminder of how I used to be about 97.6 per cent of the time in those early years post divorce. 

It rarely happens now, and when it does, I ask why instead of thinking, well shit, this is the way it is. This is the way I am.  It might be that I have some pre-flying anxiety  since my mom and I will be going to the east coast soon for her annual trip, and after I leave her at my brother's place I will be flying around here and there. I can handle that. It might be because last night I dove into the inner depths of Dan's iPad and found beginnings of songs he'd started but never finished. So I emailed them to myself. Like this:

How I long for your crazy sadness,
Enlightening gladness
Inexplicable madness

And then this morning when I woke before six and turned on my computer, wow--for a split second, Dan was alive because there was email from him in my inbox!--and I suppose that started my day in an unbalanced fashion. I could not concentrate on writing at all today, but did manage to read, so that's something. 

I drank two glasses of wine with dinner while my mom and I talked about the birds that will be showing up this winter. The buffleheads. The grebes. It was your basic "Tell me about the rabbits, George" conversation.We're waiting for those winter birds. And we're hoping for pelicans. The first winter they were diving into the marina non-stop, the next winter not so much. Who knows how it will be this winter. Who knows.

The Leftover Report and Other Post Thanksgiving Matters

Buffleheads on their annual stopover

Stuffing: gone
Wine jello: one serving
Turkey: enough for a sandwich
Pumpkin pie: stop calling my name damn it
Mashed potatoes: Ugh
Sweet potatoes: You will be turned into a fancy tart with an almond crust and coconut topping.
Turkey chili that was made yesterday and served for dinner: half gone.

Buffleheads are swimming back and forth by our boat dock. The cat is sleeping. The young people have gone to a movie. My mother is crocheting in her room. The oven is half-way through its cleaning cycle. A load of laundry is churning.

I refuse to clean the floors just yet. I may drink another Mexican coca-cola while sitting in my quiet house reveling in the sweetness of having my grown-up daughters here for the holiday, of time with friends, and time with the man who loves me. I always learn something new from him. This morning it was how to easily remove the seeds from a pomegranate.

That blur where his right arm should be is a swiftly wielded wooded spoon.
A few deft whacks and the seeds fall into a bowl.
We ate them mixed into a little leftover cranberry sauce for our breakfast dessert.

Bird-O-Rama

My photos do not come close to capturing the beauty of the birds placidly riding the waves in between fishing forays. Pelicans, gulls, terns, cormorants, grebes all bobbing and dipping and diving together.

In addition, I'm happy to report that a few buffleheads have appeared in our portion of the marina. They're just as striking as the photo (from Wikipedia), and in shape, bear a resemblance to bathtub tug boats. My mom calls them her ships. Which can be a little confusing since she also talks a lot about the boats that come and go in the marina.