Six ordinary things, one creepy

Portrait of my living room window, by Adelaide C. Johnson

1.  I wish I pronounced it "nye-thur".  But I don't, I say nee-ther.

2.  I need a plot.  Plot is lacking.  In my writing, in my life.  The plot is actually thinning.

3.  I have a customer who said that I come highly recommended, with three caveats:

• I'm a hippy flower child
• I've seen the light
• I worked for King County

I completely disagree with him on the first two.  I'm not even sure there is a light; it seems pretty dark out to me.  Really dark.  I mean, Donald Trump, a racist, misogynist, lying bully has just been nominated for president.  It doesn't get much darker than that.  (Side note:  The only thing I comfort myself with about the whole Trump thing is that my father isn't alive to see this.  He would be so very disheartened.)

And jeez, hippy flower child?   I wear shoes, fer goddsakes.  I don't own any flow-y skirts or daisy headgear.  After I said that, though, I noticed him looking skeptically at the back seat of my car, noting the massage table, yoga mat, and beekeeping equipment.  It's not what it looks like, I wanted to say.  But he didn't ask.

4.  I think there's a whole lot of throwing the baby out with the bathwater in this world, and it's making me super irritated.  Bleh.  With luck and a bit of focus, I'll write more about that.

5.  I found the first chanterelles of the season this week.  Yikes!  It's weird to be gathering chanterelles and swimming in the lake in the same week.  Those two don't usually overlap.  Which may be why I wake up every morning, completely disoriented:  What season is this? Am I supposed to be anywhere today?  Is anyone expecting me?  What am I doing on the planet?  and so on.  Usually, I have no answers and can roll over and go back to sleep.

T and the Squirrel

6.  I visited the creepiest field site ever the other day, mostly due to the presence of what appeared to be a prisoner shack: a tiny, remote cabin in the woods with bars on the windows and a deadbolt on the outside.  And a panel van to match!  Which caused me to be thankful all over again for my delightful field partner  because she's fun, knows the scientific names for most of the mosses, will rescue a squirrel at the drop of the hat, and most especially because we didn't end up being prisoners.  One of the more disturbing things about the day was that, while T and I crawled around in the bushes for three hours looking for wetlands, the guy kept his lawnmower on, supposedly mowing his lawn.  When we got back to the car, his tiny lawn remained unmowed.  Adding to our feelings that we were being watched all day.

7.  I have a minor athletic injury from playing Sudoku online.  I won't be able to compete in the Olympics this time.  I'm kind of glad about that, though, because Rio doesn't sound very fun.  In fact, I'm trying to quit.  All those boxes begging to be filled with one to nine.  Who cares?  My thumb is sore from all of it.  I'm doing the sudoku version of methadone, which is, embarrassingly enough, manual sudoku, with an actual pencil.  It's so tedious.  The only time you should do that is if you're stuck in an airplane.  That's an actual rule.

Ok, I made it to seven this time.  And you did too!  Thanks for sticking it out.