Birdie

Yesterday a bird fell out of a tree in the backyard while I was whittling a penguin out of wood**. I only figured it out when the Small Dog, who is a cocker spaniel and therefore is engineered to fetch birds, risked life and limb fighting the bamboo thicket and later a thorn bush while trying to get at it.

The bird was freaking out so it ran around the yard and I managed to tackle Dog just when she had the bird's tail in her mouth but hadn't chomped down yet. The bird ran away into the thorn bush and I tied up Dog so that the bird could regain its composure and fly away. It didn't, though, and stayed on the ground beneath the bush until not even the combined efforts of my dad, my sister, her fiancé and me were any help getting it out of the bush and away from Dog. Eventually we gave up when my dad pointed out that it was hopping around to get away from us and it was getting poked by all the thorns.

Small Dog stayed tied up for the rest of the day, except for a brief stint where she tugged at the chain so much that her collar snapped in two (killer instinct, that dog has), and this morning the bird had migrated into a small bamboo on the other side of the yard. The bird's mom was flapping around the bamboo and screaming at her kid, and also screaming at Maxie when she wandered into the yard for some sniffing, a pee and possibly breakfast. It followed her around, hopping on the wall and on the trees, screaming at the top of its birdie lungs. Maxie totally didn't notice.

I don't know what the bird's status is now. I haven't seen it since morning, although I heard it conversing with its mom in the afternoon. For my own peace of mind, and to make up for making the bird poke itself with thorns yesterday, I made a little bird bath and tied it to the braches of the tree. Next to it I put a slice of bread with almond butter and sunflower seeds. I read that in a kids' activity book when I was little, except in the book they used peanut butter. I figured that our peanut butter has some added oils and whatnot and probably the almond butter is better for the bird. Or for the bugs, who are probably going to be the ones to eat it.

** I do not mention this to show of my whittling skills, but because "whittling" is a funny word. Like "soup".

Yoga

I woke up today with a horrible headache, stiffness and pain all over my body, including my eyes (!). So I languished in bed for a while, then moved downstairs to languish on the sofa so that my parents could take pity on me more easily (I'm all about helping others).

After some aspirin, a nap and some mother-brewed Chamomile tea, I did some yoga with a DVD. The DVD was bizarre, featuring a woman called Wai Lana who demonstrated the poses while wearing an assortment of colorful jumpsuits and a flower wreath decorating each of her extremities, in various picturesque sceneries (mountains, beaches, rivers…) on a big, orange living room carpet.

Anyway, regardless of its weirdness, the yoga helped me loosen up my sore muscles and made the last bit of my headache dissipate. During the relaxation, when you're supposed to lie down with your eyes closed and enjoy the music, I peeked at the screen and was surprised to see footage of Wai Lana dancing in the snow, sledding with her friends and having snow fights.

I'm feeling much better now, enough to want some Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

Vacation

Last week, from Monday to Friday, I went with several of my friends from high school to Morelos. One of them has an uncle who built a weekend house there, though the place isn't used much. It has three bedrooms, two bathrooms and an outdoor kitchen all in a row at the back of the property, and then a lawn with a few trees and a pool.

We got there by bus (it's not a long ride– about 1.5 hours on a bus, then two half-hour rides on vans and then a short walk up a hill) and spent several hours cleaning the place and reclaiming it from the insects and arachnids who had staked out their territory in the absence of people. It had accumulated dust and dirt and did I mention the wasps?

There were a few wasp nests here and there. Some of them we knocked down, but we left the bigger ones alone. The biggest was inside a bathroom, so it happened several times that someone would go in, shut the door, and then come barreling back out in a panic shrieking that there was a wasp inside.

One night, most of us stayed up late talking, and then moved into a small tent that we had set up on the porch (on the porch because it was raining so hard). Seven of us somehow squeezed into the two-person tent to keep talking, and then six of us fell asleep inside (one guy was smart enough to go to bed at 3AM). We woke up in the morning feeling all stiff and crampy.

Another night we set up a bigger tent and slept in the yard. Sometime in the early morning someone woke up and noticed that their blanket was wet, and realized that it was raining and the tent was leaking. So we groggily went to our rooms, and stupidly left behind a bunch of sheets and comforters behind to get soaked in the tent.

Oh, and on one day, my friend's uncle– the owner of the house– swung by with some other men to paint the walls. They brought a little boy, about four years old, who we took turns playing with ALL DAY. That kid did not know the meaning of the word "tired". For about an hour we played a game that consisted of him standing at the edge of the pool and "hiding" a plastic ball inside one of four inflatable swimming tires. He would then instruct me to swim underwater from one end of the pool to the other and surface through the hole in the tires, looking for the ball. Of course the ball was always in the last tire where he made me look. On the plus side, it was an excellent workout; that kid should be a personal trainer.