Reading: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children, though not noticeably. More noticeably, Harry Potter 2-4

7July 2002: Set up

1. Blake likes laundry. He has very strong feelings, some sexual, some not, about socks, bandanas, and t-shirts. RDC's t-shirts, not usually mine. What the difference is between RDC's about-to-implode "This is your brain on reggae" t-shirt and any of my four Bike-to-Work Day t-shirts, I don't know, but Blake does. I hold up a t-shirt, to give it a snap before folding it, and Blake comments. (I maybe should stop snapping the reggae one, but the reason it's a work-out shirt is that it's fifteen years old.) Blake might greet the shirt, "Wheet WHEET!" or he might call it a pretty bird or some other chatter, but comment he will. After several minutes of this, he gets overstimulated enough that his commentary decays into shrieks. Or I can show him one of my own t-shirts for a bit of silence. It is a great treat for me when he chatters at one of my garments.

2. Blake has this little growly noise that he uses almost exclusively to imitate one of us yawning and stretching. When we discovered this we exaggerated our yawns-and-stretches to encourage him. He's used it in a couple of other instances, not many. It is an extremely cute little "grrrrr" noise.

3. I have this damn cold. It was a cough for a while, then it went backward and clogged my throat, and it's wiped me out. I've had almost four days off--I went in for two hours Friday and came home--and the most I've accomplished is some weeding, watering, and picking cherries. We watched "Ocean's Eleven" Saturday night. Matt Damon's character's character [sic] tells someone that a man has a criminal record "as long as my--" and then catches himself and finishes, "--well, it's pretty long." We paused the movie until I got over the coughing fit brought on by the single laugh. It's only been with the most recent few colds that I can remember choking on laughter. Do I have different colds or is this an age thing or what?

After all that set-up,

4. Last night I was folding laundry, which was heaped on the bed, while RDC sat at the dining table with a laptop. RDC has been working out again, a lot, and there were lots of t-shirts, bandanas worn as sweatbands, and socks. It was almost bedtime for both of us, and the laundry had overstimulated Blake into shrieking REALLY LOUDLY from his convenient perch on my shoulder RIGHT NEXT TO MY EAR. Now I know damn well that yelling at someone is not how to get him to learn to be quiet, and this is why I have a bird who will never leave my house instead of a full-fledged human who would be unfit to join society after my rearing. Eventually I turned and snarled over my shoulder, right in his sweet little yellow face, "Would you just shut UP!"

The next thing RDC saw was me stagger into the hallway, holding onto the doorframe, choking with laughter and coughing, Blake still on my shoulder. He's not much of a parrot, talking-wise. Bigger and smarter ones seem to speak much more in context, like imitating the sound of the phone being dialed and carrying on one half of a phone conversation, or laughing--their own or the learned sound of human laughter--after calling the family dog into the room using the human's voice, laughing at the dog's bewilderment. But Blake is enough of a parrot to know that he doesn't like to be spoken to in a harsh tone of voice. When I snarled at him, he growled back at me.