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In these few past minutes, it's raining, thundering actually. My little terrier is panicked, even on her Prozac. She prefers the Xanax, the zapper of anxiety. Well, who wouldn't? I mean, the small white pill evaporates the chatter in her nerves. Poor boo.

We are listening to Sigur Ros as it thunders. The bird is in bed. Maybe he wakes when the rumbling starts, but he doesn't peep from his room. Maybe his pupils dilate. When he gets scared during the day, he sits up straight, his feathers flat to his body, his torso and head still, as if he's listening for the turn of the planet. Then, at a cue known just to him, he relaxes, slouches a little, hunches his shoulders like he's ready to slack off. Or maybe fly over to his box in a bag and shred some magazines.

All in all, he's really just a small alien to me. A little green man. Jonesy's figured out the code, the mishmash of language he speaks. Me? I'm the mama who's a tad bit distracted, trying to type as the bird regurgitates on my pinkie. He scuttles across my keyboard, silencing the speakers or closing files or diminishing frames with his quick pace. His warm, scaled eight toes, briefly on my hand--a hey, a message from the avian to the human to say hello back. He means it, or he'll go on next to eat the computer cord or the mail. Then who's in charge, eh?

Love Triangle

I don’t know if all birds are perverts, but Sweet William sure is. I discovered this disconcerting fact soon after he came to live with us, not by catching him in the act, but by being the object of his attention. Well, not exactly me, but my knuckle. He sat on my finger, which is innocent enough, but then maneuvered himself around, straddled the knuckle of my thumb, made a happy, chortling sound and just went to town. I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on at first, (oh how naïve I was), but he sure did. Yep, he’s a bird who knows his way around a knuckle.

Initially I just let him do it – he is, after all, an incarcerated bird, a being who knows the magic of flight, yet is forbidden to soar. How would you feel in the same situation? Angry? Frustrated? Like you might just get your jollies wherever possible? So how could I take away any simple joy?

Foolishly I told a friend about this less than endearing habit. She raised her fist in the black power pose and shouted, “Power to the parrot!” That would have been fine once, but a week or so later I ran into her at the market and she did it again, this time adding a knowing smirk. The chortling, the smirking -- it all made me feel dirty, so I had to break up with Sweet William.

But that wasn’t easy to do, after all, we couldn’t sit down and have a heart to heart discussion, me telling him that it’s not him, it’s me, all the while both of us knowing it’s him. I had to be even more manipulative. The next time he decided to get intimate I rotated my hand so he had a less advantageous position which caused him to scream and bite me, angry for the interruptus. He didn’t give up easily. He made his move again and again, each time suffering the same dissatisfaction. So, thankfully, he finally went off in search of a more willing partner. Which he found in a tube of chapstick.

The courtship.

One morning Sweet William was busy shredding an oven mitt and since destruction is his favorite activity (or perhaps second favorite) he was content, leaving me to drink my coffee in peace. It was a morning like most others until I heard his happy chortling ‘I love your knuckle’ sound. I turned around quickly, catching him in the act with a tube of Burt’s Bee Balm chapstick. He was straddling it, scooting it across the counter, pushing it forward, rolling from side to side, oblivious of all else around him. He eventually pushed the object of his desire over the edge of the counter, hanging on for just a second the way Slim Pickens rode the nuclear bomb in Dr. Strangelove. Then he took flight, landing on the floor near his amour.

He caught up with the chapstick, straddled it (her?) and carried on as before, perhaps a little more aggressively, pissed off about the chase. Now he had much more room to roll around and he skittered around the floor, chortling and occasionally shrieking, oblivious to the ancient cat who could probably still have him for a snack.

But this isn’t the end of the story. Later in the day I caught him cheating on the chapstick with an empty Advil bottle. Now he goes back and forth between the two with no clear favorite, his attentions doled out liberally to each. They all seem ok with it; the advil bottle, the chapstick and Sweet William. As long as he leaves my knuckle out of it, I'm happy for him and his love triangle.

Occasionally you wake and crave something or somewhere you haven't thought about in a long time. Maybe your subconscious has been rolling it around for awhile, who knows, but then one day, the nostalgia or wishfulness or flat out craving arises. A few weeks ago, I dreamt about the verdant, quiet saltwater estuaries along the Southern coast, with their meandering creeks, the long-legged wading birds, the sound of air popping from the muddy banks, and the occasional surfacing dolphin.



On another plane of wanting, this past week I saw a sad, scared conure at the shelter, not yet up for adoption, shaking in its cage, unhappy at my cooing near it. It had a splotchy yellow head, so maybe it was a sun conure x'ed with something else, like a Jenday. I heard on internet that they are called Sun-days. How cute. How perfect. How too much.

I have written before at length why I won't get another bird. I know the logical and logistical reasons for my No. These factors don't factor in emotion, especially ones inflated by walking around a shelter, where we got Bug in the first place.

And the logical and logistical have no say in wanting to kayak in the marsh, to drag your fingers in the warm water, either.

The murky weather of the brain vs. the tick-tock, stay on task mantra of living as a day-to-day human often don't mix very well.

Day After Day

I was offered a job yesterday. One would think that being offered a job after two months of unemployment would make me happy. One would think. But instead, I was more depressed than before.

Picture a low-end used car dealership. Now take that image and grunge it up a little more. Focus your attention on the perma-grime around the light switch, the chipped plastic table and clunky metal chairs, the jagged rip of the veneer on the inside of the bathroom door in the shape of Africa, or a profile of Martha Washington. So hard to tell which.

Used car dealerships all have a certain smell, something like WD-40 mixed with bubble gum. When I left the interview I couldn’t get that smell off me all day. It was in my clothes, my hair, the folds of my brain. It's never really bothered me before, but yesterday I felt a little sick every time I caught a whiff of it.

Before my dad moved up to the bigger league of the new car business he owned a used car dealership. He actually had a couple of different car lots, but the one I remember most was called Bear Motor Company. I remember it as a low-end, grungy place too, but not depressing. It was where my dad poured his energy and made his money. He always seemed happy at the car lot.

I worked for him one summer, checking fluids, detailing cars, running errands and other odd jobs. Many of my tasks required me to get inside the vehicles, some of which smelled like vomit, others like sweat, air “fresheners” or fast food. I began every morning by starting each vehicle. I’d open the door, wait for the heat to escape and then take the biggest breath I could muster, hop in, turn the key with a silent prayer and try to start it without breathing. The stench was too powerful to even mouth breath so if the engine wouldn't fire quickly enough I'd have to get out, gasp and jump back in for another try.

One of my other jobs at the lot was to clean out the cars Dad bought or took in on trade. I found a $20 bill once. I also found a used tampon, half a burrito, a dirty diaper and a comb that looked like a switchblade. Hardly a winning hand. Ok, so maybe it was a little depressing.

I turned down yesterday's job offer which means I won’t be keeping the books at the sad little used car dealership, but I also won’t be working at all. Any idea what it’s like to be out of a job for two months? It’s like when you have a cold, stay home from work and wear your pajamas for the entire day. That evening your hair’s still messed up and you don’t know exactly what to do with yourself. You feel like eating dinner is kind of weird – after all, you didn’t do anything all day. It’s like the dull thud of the melancholy of a Sunday evening. It’s like you’ve lost a good friend. It’s like going to the funeral of someone you don’t know. Day after day.

When A Quiet Saturday Night is Enough

The bird has been put the bed, the dogs are asleep on the couch and floor, Jonesy is out on the town. It's just me, the heater kicking on, and mint ice cream calling from the freezer.

During the week, I don't get much silence, much empty time to be alone. My head is full of static, I forget to breathe fully (by the end of the day, a series of huge exhales ushers forth), and I watch a lot of rented movies to unwind.

When I get home from work, the bird is screaming, the terrier is leaping and yelping, and sometimes the old cat is crying in the basement. After watching a few episodes about the heavily boozed characters on Mad Men, I see the attraction to vodka. But then their excess tips into obliterative, and well, I just can't compete. I'd rather have a good nap. Liquor up, Ad Men.

The absence of household chaos, the lack of cacophonic competition--this is a humble goal. The night is quiet, especially the later it gets. I turn off lights to not bother the napping hounds, and my brain rests a minute, sighs.

I am to blame, I have created this slow crescendo with each new pet: quiet cats for years, then a dog who rarely barked, then another, louder, but not too loud dog, then a terrier mix thrown in who paces and whines and frets and barks, and then, then, then--then the minute we decide, Yes, we will take that small green bird home from the humane society, and how he screamed and screamed and screamed when we got him home--how his wings were clipped and we were in other rooms sometimes than he was (it could not be helped as one has to move and eat and clean), and I thought my head would fissure, and I had the flash, We can just take him back, yes we can.

Jonsey said, calmly: We made a promise to him to feed and protect him for his whole life.

It was the sudden turned up volume in the house that caught me off guard. This level of calling and insisting? Really?

Really.

You adjust your ears' expectations. It becomes What You Know.

But a quiet night at home, delicious. Magnificent.

The Wrath of Grape

Sweet William stole a grape this morning. He grabbed it off the counter and tore into it right away, his little pupils dilating and contracting so rapidly that it looked quite comical – in, out, in, out, whoooo! Attempts to take the grape away ended in threats of violence so I gave up and watched him devour what looked like a reddish-purple bowling ball in his tiny talons.

I wonder if he’ll regret it when the excitement wears off and he’s left with an aching gut. Or will he feel fine, smug even? One thing is for sure he’ll be doing you-know-what like Niagara Falls soon enough. Imagine eating a 5 pound watermelon for breakfast. My guess is, you wouldn’t want to stray too far from the small room. And I wouldn’t want you sitting on my shoulder.

Conures With Socks

It's not surprising that parrots, or birds in general, don't wear socks. How would they perch, and wouldn't their nails get caught in the fabric?

If socks weren't so ergonomically challenging, Bug could use some in the winter--sometimes when he steps up, his feet are cold. And then I feel bad that his whole, small torso's shivering. Occasionally he steps in his poop, so the socks scenario gets further complicated. Toed socks with grippy bottoms like those slippers one can buy?

His species is from South America, where birds don't need footwear if you live in the jungle. Sometimes he stands on one foot, the other tucked into the electric green of his vent feathers. Whether he lives in the land of snow or tropics, I am pretty sure that behavior wouldn't change. Up here, however, it probably serves to warm his little phalanges.

My own socks, my favorite Smart Wools, have taken a turn for entropy this winter. I've lost about half my pairs to the Rift Phenomenon: the heels wear out where the thicker heel stitching transforms to the thinner vertical material at the back of the heel. Which then equals: a hole.

I can't seem to throw these broken socks away. They cost a lot but I don't darn, like my grandmother did. Wouldn't the repair create a line/scar that would rub the skin like a too tight pair of shoes on the heel, where you'd have to wear a bandaid?

And sometimes Bug bites my socks and creates his own new holes.

I guess we are between a sock and hard place.