Who Knows?

Just walked out to the back porch and three black crows drifted up into the tree from the bird feeder but a juvenile male cardinal stood his ground, continued to peck, now one of the crows is back and the young bird has moved off to the nearby camellia bush to sulk.

Went to the nurse practitioner's and of course the quick Strep came back negative. There is, as always, not one damn thing wrong with me except a little something. Fever and pain and all that stuff, could be anything. They are doing a culture though and she did give me a script for amoxicillin and by god if I'm not feeling a lot better by tomorrow I'm going to take it although I have not felt the need for an antibiotic in dog's age. And maybe there IS nothing wrong with me or maybe I have the Lyme Disease (did you read that article in the New Yorker about it?) and who knows and it's left me feeling mean like somehow the medical profession has failed me again and god knows, I'm a terrible patient. I resent the FUCK out of being sick and I resent the fuck out of you being sick too.
Anyway, Lily and the boys are good again and Lily texted me a little while ago, "My baby boy just ate an entire yogurt by himself without spilling."

He's growing up, our Gibson, that merry child with the black eyebrows whom I adore.

That makes me happy, thinking about Gibson wielding a spoon to get all of his yogurt by himself and also, Elizabeth's posts while she is on respite are making me happy. I am there breathing with her, or at least in my mind.

I took my own meanness and used it to clear out some crap in my bathroom. Clutter of makeup that I never use, fifty packs of elastic hair ties, stuff that no one in this world needs and I never use. Some of it thrown away, some of it put away, tidily, in case I ever do wear make-up again in this lifetime. I am not betting on that one although you never know.

Here's another thing that I'm glad for- a friend thought she was having a heart attack but she wasn't and she's home and fine. That's mighty good. The medical profession did well by her and I'm glad. They checked her out every which way so she can rest easy and so can her beloved.
This is a comfort.

And another good thing- Jessie interviewed for a job as a birth assistant with a midwife and got the job. She'll do that part time when they need her and I think of her kneeling by the bed of a laboring woman the way I used to do and honey, that just makes my heart so very, very glad because she's going to love it and she's going to be so good at it.

This is life in summer. The storms come in and they cool the thirst of the Earth and they knock down a big old pecan branch and if you're lucky, there aren't any chickens underneath it when it falls. Bacteria and viruses thrive and so do ticks and we live on the best planet possible and at the same time, it is perilous and sometimes I wonder if it's our native planet at all and I will probably go to my grave believing that we humans are some crazy experiment, some delicious clumsy vulnerable brilliant stupid result of ape-alien genes whose backs and knees are not really there yet, evolutionarily speaking, when it comes to walking upright in this gravity.

Well, that's enough for now. I'm alive and I doubt I'll be dying anytime soon because I am way too mean and you know it but again, a pecan branch, a bolt of lightening, a truck a train a tick- any of these could carry me off tomorrow. You too.

We might as well use our meanness to clean the bathroom. We might as well use our sweetness to be grateful for it all, including the teenaged cardinal, the three black crows, the soft rain almost quit falling now from the gray velvet sky.