RDC woke at 2:00 this morning, which isn't even wake-up time in Sydney but some kind of middle ground. He made himself peppermint tea and buttered toast, and Blake, who often sleeps through my morning routine because he knows it doesn't concern him, squoke at the sound of the toaster plunger.
RDC has pictures from the Sydney aquarium of a platypus swimming. He saw a wild eclectus in a park log-rolling on an empty soda can. The Aussies have kangaroos and emus on their money. But apparently aboriginal Australians remain even more marginalized than Americans. So I don't need to move there yet.
He said he was bringing me home a present and if it broke I would have lots of little presents. It survived the trip: a hollowed etched emu egg. The shell is maybe four times thicker than a chicken egg and three times bigger than a goose egg. The unetched surface is blue and pebbled; the etched oval is paler blue and delicately worked and depicts (not an emu but) a crested parrot. The perfect circle at the fat end of the otherwise intact shell means that there is one fewer emu in the world, but apparently they are raised for meat and this is not a wild egg. I hope.
RDC didn't see any wild buddies, which is good because if he had I would be wildly jealous instead of only slightly envious. But he had budgerigars and cockatoos on his hotel balcony and he swam in the ocean and that's bad enough.
This weekend is devoted to backrubs and jetlag recovery and fall cleaning. It is sunny for the first time in days, too. Maybe two whole days. And Uncle Tex gave Blake a new oatmeal box, and Minne gave him an oatmeal canister, so he has the door of the first to widen and the tube-ness of the second to explore (with just the last half inch of his tail peeking out) so it's clearly a viciously busy time.
This book didn't grab me, maybe for no good reason. Mary Gordon's prose was lovely and even her take on three different love relationships, fresh and interesting, failed to grip me as I wish it had. Well, really it was the first novella, "The Immaculate Man," that took me an age. The other two, the eponymous one and "Living at Home," were better.
The most noteworthy thing about this book is that it is signed on the title page, inscribed to me, signed by the author, and I have no memory of seeing her. However, I do remember telling this story before.
I went to the zoo sometime over the summer to see the baby okapi. It wasn't in the pen with the others and a keeper nearby said maybe it was too hot. It's a rainforest animal and Denver's strong sun could easily be too much for such a thick-coated critter. Today we took a walk through the park toward the zoo, hoping for an okapi this time. The zoo was packed with people but not, unfortunately, with a baby okapi. Did the zoo give it away? Was the sun, again, too strong? I want to see it before it grows up. Also, there were only three giraffes, whose indoor shelter is also public so they cannot hide. Only one of the two calves born last year was there (I think).
Afterward we lounged at the pool for a while. I played in the leisure pool and read The Rest of Life and RDC might have napped in a jetlaggy kind of way. In the evening I had a really nice conversation with my dad. While we talked I was in the front garden weeding; SPM walked up just as we were discussing the debates. SPM offered his opinion as he passed and my dad laughed. I mention this because the contrast between him and my mother struck me: my mother seems not to pay attention to what I say when I am on the phone with her, let alone be able to register stray comments from passersby. I could be saying something like "Don't poop on me, you bananahead," and instead of understanding that I am immediately commanding her grandbird she would ask (and has asked) me whether I am addressing her. (I did not mention this to my father.) Instead I told him the story of Taz's (an African Grey) rescue:
For reasons surpassing understanding, Taz's wing feathers had gone unclipped to the point he was flighted, and he doesn't have a travel cage. So when DMB needed to bring Taz somewhere, she stepped him, who allowed no one but JHT to touch him--up on a perch and brought him outside, whereupon he took off. But he's a captive bird and his wind gave out when he was a ways out over the pond, and down he went. DMB, who is afraid of water and cannot swim, stood on the edge of the pond and screamed as Taz flapped desperately to keep himself afloat. The noise brought out a neighbor and the neighbor's guest, and the guest threw himself into the pond--which might have alligators and snapping turtles in it--and swam out and got the bird, swimming back three-limbed and carrying Taz in one hand. When they got back to shore, Taz looked at his rescuer and said, "Good job!" The rescuer was Austrian and needed that translated. And then, when DMB shook her finger at Taz and said, "Just wait until I tell your daddy what you did!" Taz said, "Uh-oh."
My dad liked that.