Well, BT (husband) and I are now in Sweden, in one of its largest towns, Goteborg (spelling!!!). We stayed in a hotel overlooking the harbor and are now out today looking at various places of interest and getting strange additives to keep the van running smoothly. (CARS!!!!)
BT kindly drove me to an internet cafe where I can appease my addiction to getting online and reading email and deleting TONS of spam. BT observed once that it looks as if I want to download the entire Internet, and he's not far wrong. Well, I would skip over the sleazy sites and hate sites...
I'd better post this and get a move on, as my Internet time is almost up..
Fare well and prosper,
Harmony
The baby seagull has been nowhere to be found for at least five days now, and I fear the worst. Of course, I had become attached to him, and looked forward to his learning to fly. There has been so much loss in my life that I am just "numbing out" rather than feeling any more pain- maybe not the best way to go....
I shall MISS my little friend, that I do know.
Tomorrow my husband and I take off on a camping trip for a week, and it's much needed. I'm going to bring a few of my favorite books and am planning on just cosying myself in the evenings.
Once again I am reduced to a question I used to ask all the time, and that is this > Life! Why does it have to be lived?
Not to worry, it's a rhetorical question, a silly one, and meant in the spirit of Woody Allen's film "Bananas", where the dictator of the world makes everone speak Swedish and wear their underwear on the outside of their clothing.
July already! wow!
Ball of Fluff, the baby seagull, is growing bigger and sturdier. He continues to walk around outside, guarded from a distance by his seagull parents and flock and yours truly.
Today he ate some fish- on his own, without help from his parents. They haven't been wanting to feed him for the past two days. However, his appetitie is good, and his energy seems great. He's doing what he needs to do to become a Seagull in this world.
His chirp is changing from a baby's "peep" to a transitional slightly older sound. He keeps stretching his wings and hopefully in a couple of weeks will be ready to fly.
Some schoolgirls stopped by the other day and were fascinated with him- I could tell they would've loved to pick him up/take him home, but I said hello to them and we started talking. They mostly just spoke Norwegian, so I did the best I could. They learned to keep more of a distance between themselves and Ball of Fluff, mostly because it made his mom so nervous. She's generally perched on the nearest rooftop keeping an eye on him.
Well, time for me to get back to work on my websites-
Harmony
18:23 approximately, I happened to glance outside and saw that a dark cat had just seized Ball of Fluff in its mouth- I charged out there and yelled "NO!" at the top of my lungs, whereby the frightened cat dropped Ball of Fluff and ran off. The baby seagull walked toward me, uninjured, and apparently, not even in shock.
The baby seagull's now resting quietly, after walking around for some time after the cat attack. Close one.
How do photographers of wildlife documentaries DO it? I'm the sort who will rescue spiders and set them back outdoors, or fish earthworms out of rain puddles and set them back on dryer ground.
People always talk about the law of the jungle; and yet it seems that that jungle is free to make up its own rules. Otherwise, how would we hear news articles about elephant herds freeing antelopes from a fenced enclosure and, in another documentary, another elephant herd saving an orphaned baby elephant from another herd just as it was becoming surrounded by hyenas?
A very quiet, sun-filled Sunday today, with a fresh, faintly cool breeze just off the harbor, which is only a few minute's walk away. Ball of Fluff is growing a bit bigger and stronger, and is stretching his wings. Confined to the ground after he fell from his nest uninjured, he and his mom seem to have worked out a routine for his feeding. Both of them know me by now, and seem to realize I'll keep a respectful distance and not hurt them.
It's amazing to me how well Ball of Fluff knows the limits of his own "territory" on the ground. He wanders from the tiny little parking lot (where there is little car traffic), through the open wooden post fence to our yard, and back again. There is a grey stone wall covered with ivy, and he blends in perfectly with the grey. When he isn't moving, it's hard to see him.
The rest of the seagull flock seems to keep a friendly eye out for him, too.
Question- I wonder if seagulls eat jellyfish? The harbor waters here in Norway are full of them.
Jeez Louise, it's been almost a whole month since my last entry. Where DOES the time go. I've had other things on my mind, namely an intractable, incurable, rare disease named Dercum's Disease.
Other than that, it's midsummer here in Norway and that means bonfires all over the place. It'll be light enough here at 3 AM to read a newspaper outside.
P.S. Each year, the seagulls build a nest on the roofs here in town, and each year, one or two baby seagulls will fall out of the nests onto the ground. Well, so it happened this year, a little ball of fluff fell uninjured on the ground and so far he's been doing just fine for the past week or so. His mother and parents keep close guard on him, and rest of the seagull flock seems very supportive.
Ball of Fluff looks nothing like a seagull, of course. He looks mottled, grey, brown, and speckled. Fluff on two little stick legs, walking around and chirping. He knows enough to hide himself during the day, and comes out when no one's around to get food from him mom, or to eat bread crumbs thrown on the ground.
Well, the "thing" about me and my relationship to keeping a journal seems to be this- my moods keep shifting, my goals for my life and this journal keep shifting. Yesterday I was envisioning a world where everything is basically fine (can you imagine????). This "ok" world lies in the science fantasy realm and is equpped with convenient "leaky" dimensions. In other words, all the drama in the "OK" world comes via hapless charactors who stumble into it through a portal on (you guessed it)good old, screwed-up Earth.
In the alternate world, all the Earth charactors get a whole new operating system with which to re-examine their most cherished beliefs. Turns out that, on my new world, there's no racism, no such thing as war, no need to lie- egads, the mind boggles. How would all of us act if there was no poverty and all of us had homes?
I can hear the writing teachers groaning now. "You've got to put in The Challenge!!" they cry. Ok, I will, I will...gimme a break. Maybe the Great Challenge in AlterWorld will be astonishingly bad tv commercials. Dunno...gotta think about that. Or maybe it will feature the first "Annoyment Park" in the universe.
Hmmmmmmm.
When I first wake up, everything feels like the first crocus in spring poking its leaves out of the snow. The air is cold, but with a quickening freshness to it and I can feel a gentle spring sun on my face. Blues and golds are vivid in the sky; moss is alive on the rocks. As yet, there are no weathered orange crates or broken factory windows in this world- it is a simple planet of friendly neighbors, setting out freshly baked pies on their window sills to cool. I can trust in this world- trust that the road will unwind itself gently in front of me.
I can wander everywhere in this world and never come to anything that calls itself a country. There are no borders, no passports- there is only the next thunderstorm around the next bend- only the sound of a waterfall somewhere off the path on my right.
Sometime before sunset I will find a place off the path to settle down for the night. I will weave myself a safe nest of leaves and branches, seek among the wild roots and plants for my supper. And afterwards I will go to sleep, with the sound of the stars singing in my ears.
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