Yes, I do remove my glasses for the picture.

Reading: Penelope Fitzgerald, At Freddie's and Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children

Moving: biked 3 miles and swam 1.5K

31 July 2001: Rain!

It was over 70 when I got up and still 80 in the living room. When I went out, cautiously, at lunch, however, cloud cover had cut the heat. At a couple of times rain sprinkled from directly overhead while a couple of degrees away, sun shone as strong as ever. I didn't see a rainbow.

I didn't go to the library to confess my sin re Iris Murdoch. Monday I did go, not to pay up and grovel but to meet Haitch's sister, brother-in-law, and two nieces. Today I wimped out. Tomorrow I must go. If nothing else I have to finish the book.

Instead I looked for a long black skirt to wear in Europe. My succession of cheap black skirts leaves me nothing to wear in a European capital. I went to Ann Taylor loft and found a good skirt not available in a 10. So instead I bought a cookie along with my vegetable wrap from Organic Orbit so I could fit into the 12.

Also I deliberately didn't ride my bike to work planning to swim this afternoon. Can't have too much exercise, you know. Bad for you. Very dangerous, like asps. So I rode to Congress and swam .4K when guards spotted lightning and whistled us out of the pool. This made me very sad. A minute later we were allowed back in, the head lifeguard megaphoning that she knows how we feel about our lap swim but to keep in mind how fast storms roll in, and at the next whistle to bail immediately. So I got another 1.1K in before the storm arrived in earnest.

It only teased, though. Not much rain, but some thunder and lightning, plenty of wind, and it cooled off, hooray!

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Can someone explain to me why At Freddie's is on the Feminista list instead of The Blue Flower or The Bookshop, either of which Penelope Fitzgerald book is better than Freddie's and, what's more, both of which seem to have, in contrast to Freddie's, a point?

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Mo had a bird that swam? That's what it sounds like, anyway, if it paddled around in a cup. Hmm, wasn't that a Misfit Toy, a bird that swam instead of flew? I love giving Blake a bath, but he hasn't figured it all out yet. He doesn't like to have a shower with RDC, maybe because RDC just deflects shower spray onto him. He likes to shower with me using his spray bottle: he'll duck his head down much lower than the finger he's perched on, spread his wings over his head, turn all his feathers perpendicular to his body, lose his balance with the strange posture and the feathers held wrong and then the weight of his drenched plumage. And when we're outside, he'll stick his head in his water dish and shake it around. So I have tried to provide him a shallow dish of water for a proper bath, when we're outside and I'm supervising closely--since he's clearly thought of using his water dish, but he doesn't like that. Also he doesn't like to be sprayed with his bottle except when we're in the shower, so I can't cool him off that way when we're outside. Sigh.

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In other bird news, someone finally ventured into the bird feeder today. I've had that sucker up for 10 days and the only critters who've expressed an interest are the squirrels, whom we do not scruple to spray with the sink sprayer-hosie dealie through the kitchen window. They have enough to eat with the nectarines: there's not much fruit left on the tree at all, a month away from their season. Today I saw what might have been the first bird--I think so because the seed level hasn't dropped at all--a mountain chickadee. This is a slightly different thing than a black-capped chickadee, though it still does have a black cap. More of a streak. And it still calls "chick-a-dee-dee-dee." It is, because it had the gonads to try my feeder, currently my favorite bird.