Blake singing (see the slightly open beak) and a handful of feathers from the past ten minutes.

Reading: Keri Hulme, The Bone People

Moving: walked 2.7 miles

Watching: SNOW

Listening: Sister Helen Prejean, Dead Man Walking (tape 4)

11 April 2001: Snow day

YEEEEEEEE-ha!

When I got to work I wondered why one of the fire doors between the elevator lobby and reception was closed. I checked the stack of newspapers on the receptionist's unoccupied desk and found the Überboss's. How unusual for me to get in ahead of his assistant, I thought, and started down the hall. Which was dark. I waved to the office manager as I passed her office, and she said, "Didn't you get a call?" I did not. Snow day!

So I turned around and came home on the bus. Yesterday's photograph is indeed from this morning. Because I have stuff to do! I have a weekday off, which means I am going to be immensely productive around the house. Like maybe put away the linens I had out last week for SEM. And vacuum again, because someone is going through his spring moult and the house is just carpeted in feathers.

Blake is so amazing. He really is. Wherever he is drifts a dune of feathers. Stiff flight ones, soft fluffy downy underneath ones, flat ratty underwing ones, little yellow face ones, snipped primary wing ones, precisely gray with just enough white racing stripe ones, wide sexy yellow crest ones. He's so smart, to be able to grow exactly the right feather in exactly the right spot. I need to keep that in mind when he gets overly fond of my Secret Garden coloring book.

I have to remind myself that the point of the book is to color and not to have a Sacred Relic, and that it's more important that Blake and I enjoy some quality time together than that I have an ungnawed book. Usually I read while watching television, but The Golden Notebook isn't a television kind of book. Therefore during "Sopranos" I color. I do wish Blake would enjoy the left pages--those I've already colored and turned aside--as much as he does the right, still pristine pages. I suppose there's nothing I can do about his wanting the pencils. Percy was fondest of yellow and green crayons, I think because of the color of the color rather than the flavor of the color. Blake loves all of them indiscriminately. Chewing on the pencils' wooden shafts maybe wouldn't hurt him, but it's not a chance I want to take.

Okay, I said I was going to be productive, not to blather about Blake with "The Virgin Queen" on AMC, especially since I don't like Bette Davis much (I first saw her in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" which scarred me) and Joan Collins before she became a bloated harridan doesn't look particularly better. Off like a prom dress.

Later: one more thing about Blake: when away from his cage and thirsty, Blake had always tapped his beak on my ever-present glass of water, signaling me to tip it for him to drink from. No, I have no problem doing this. Birds have no spit. As long as he didn't have a Beak Sculpture of vegetable chow and seed husks, I was okay with this. Percy used to climb the glass and dip his head in, which is dangerous for the exact same reason five-gallon buckets are dangerous for toddlers. Blake never climbed. Then last July when we went home, my sister gave me a stack of big plastic cups, laughing, because I always go for the biggest glass in her house. So I went from a pint glass from Houlihan's to a pint-and-a-half lavender plastic cup. (The others are also pastel, blue green pink yellow white.) Plastic is not as conducive to beak-tapping as glass, and so I have got in the habit of adding his water dish to his tray. (There's a plastic tray, leftover from my collge cube fridge, which we bring with him wherever he is, with buddy chow and seed balls and whatever else. He's not a dog and needs to be fed more than twice a day.) So for months I have been trying to teach him that the New glass also holds water. Yes, I've been encouraging him to drink from my vessel. Whatever. Last night I forgot his water dish, and he'd just had a seedball and I was pretty sure he was thirsty, so I showed him the cup of water, tipped it to make waves, drank from it myself, tipped it again for him. He finally overcame his fear of the New and Different and drank. I'm so proud.