for the birds….

Today I looked out my living room window and saw a most peculiar thing.

In preface to this little story, I should tell you that my home is now at the top of a small mountain. (I would call it a big hill but that might hurt its’ feelings.)

The Santa Ana’s have been blowing through the area and at the top of this little mountain I live on, we get some wonderful gusts for a few hours every day or so. The patio umbrellas have blown over, taking with them the table a time or two, but all in all I can’t complain about the wind as a factor by it’s self, let alone in conjunction with the fabulous view I have on two sides of the house. I love where I live. Anyway, back to the story….

I had been sleeping all day instead of going to work like I should have been because I’ve had a little touch of the heebie-jeebies or left over cooties or some such thing. In any case, I walked down the stairs, into the kitchen to get a glass of water and then out to the balcony to see the ‘haps’ when I noticed strange shadows floating up and down across the deck. I should interject here that because of the very nature of the heebie-jeebies, one should not always believe everything that one sees while under the influence of said illness. So, after the initial shock wore off and I regained my balance, I shook my head once or twice and then looked again. Sure enough, there they were: bird shaped shadows floating vertically along some unseen tether line. Otherwise, how could they do it? It took me a minute to realize that I should probably look in the sky and see what was happening instead of just staring at the shadows. (A ‘duh’ should probably be inserted here…)And there they were…..3 or 7 or 11 or some such number of fowl in the air around my deck. I could have reached out and touched them, (If I’d had a long broom stick and gallons of more energy than I had at my disposal….), but I opted instead to sit down, heavily and unsteadily, into the nearest patio chair. And I watched. (In the sky, mostly…)These birds were playing some sort of game….a floating game I guess. I’m sure the conversation went along the lines of ‘I can float better than you can.’ ‘Oh, ya? I’ll get within 7 feet of the insane cootie-lady on the deck and come away unscathed!’ They would stay within a few feet of each other and right where the gusts of wind would come riding over the top of the mountain and coast in place with their wings outstretched. Every so often, one of them would bump into one of his friends. I’m sure he got points taken off his score for that. Or maybe not, depending on how you look at it…And sometimes one would tuck his wings in and do a quick nose dive to get in a position beneath his co-coasters. But the majority of the time it was just an unbelievable site of a flock of birds coasting in place about 5 feet off the balcony. It fit the way I feel today….surreal.

By the way, I don’t recommend coming off anti-depressants cold-turkey. It really does a number on your head and reality. But I have some great support and I know I’ll come through this alright. Someday I’ll have medical coverage and this kind of snafu won’t happen anymore.

Joe went to Virginia for Thanksgiving. I miss him.

My kids are maybe coming down this weekend and I might get to see them for a few minutes. I miss them.

My job seems to be doing fine. I love what I do. I’m just not making any money at it, which is generally looked down upon in the work world. I’m hoping that through pure determination, I’ll get more successful at it. That and my good looks…..

quick recap for the kids:
i’m feeling insane and seeing things while coming off medication and it’s not really fair that some of the things i’m seeing, i AM actually seeing….looking back on a conversation you kids debated this past weekend….dev, birds could be that one thing on the earth that tyler says doesn’t believe in gravity, therefore making him the winner of that long, drawn-out debate, and i hope i didn’t just open up another whole can of worms, joe’s gone, i might see you all soon, and just because you love to do something and work really hard at it, doesn’t mean you’ll make money doing it and then you have some hard decisions to make.
XOXOXOXOXOXOXO