Eastern Tiger Swallowtail
This may or may not be the only butterfly in all of Arlington this summer. I’m informed that the stripes on the body make it look faster. Sure, okay. Why not?
Sick and tired
Summer is typically my favorite time of year but this summer has been swallowed whole by colds, an unending sinus infection, and bronchitis. I can only imagine what fall and winter have in store for me. I’m tired of being sick and sick of being tired. It affects every aspect of my being and forces me to spend entirely too much time inside my own head (thanks in part to sporadically severe congestion). Inside my own head is not a great place to be a lot of the time. It’s dark in there, densely packed with frustration, half-formed ideas, inertia, anger, fatigue, disappointment, boredom, hesitation and anxiety, obsessions, and a surprising number of penguins. The penguins are the best part.
Having said all that, I am fine. I don’t want to talk about it. This isn’t a cry for help. I’m just whining because it is all I have the energy to do of late.
Golden [a.k.a., "Sunshine on my shoulders" this one's for you, Trasherati]
The Sun on my shoulders was nice as I stood outside intently watching the butterfly bush to see if the wind would die down long enough for me to get even one good shot of one of the pair of swallowtail butterflies flitting around it. Come to think of it, the warm wind felt good too. I find heat reassuring, comforting, hopeful. I don’t know how heat feels to butterflies, but I suspect it probably feels like life to them. I can understand that.
Carrion/Questions
There were two of them sitting shoulder to shoulder, quiet and still. I don’t know why they were sitting together or what they were waiting for or why that particular street lamp was so appealing, but I do know that seeing two rather large vultures crowded onto one street lamp first thing in the morning makes me think that something or someone is about to have a very bad day.
I just hope it isn’t me.
Things I have recently said. (updated)
In no particular order but numbered for your convenience…or something.
- Not even the French can make the word fart elegant. Let this be a lesson to us all.
- The NyQuil cake has not landed. Repeat: The NyQuil cake has not landed. Over.
- That’s me. Always the villain, never the ninja.
- I don’t actually have to know people to hate them.
- There was also a lion.
- The sickle was equally problematic so I had to substitute a spatula.
- They* are, every one of them, bastards, and I hate them all.
- Can you tell which ones are naturally flavored and which ones are artificially flavored?
- I hope this door slamming in my building goes on all night. It’s terrific. Very relaxing.
- Oh my god that shower was a good idea.
- Everyone is asking me if I am responsible for the flowers. I’m going to start making stuff up: “Yes, in fact I made those from various kinds of artisan paper, some of which I manufactured myself with the help of a local paper wasp colony I discovered on a recent walkabout. I carefully crafted each petal and leaf over a period of weeks. The stalks are coated in plastic and suspended in clear gelatin designed to look and flow like water.”
- I don’t like the shiny new gold $1 coins because I can’t wrap them around my teeth.
- I am in the gravelly voice hacking cough stage of this cold so I sound like Kathleen Turner after a scotch and cigarette bender.
* Butterflies
I always wondered about this.
“Also two brothers named Newse came there to make a plantation. Once before, in Ireland, they had founded a town, naming it Newcetown, where it still stands. So now to their new settlement they gave the name New, and since it had an anchorage they called it Port, and it became New Port Newse. The brothers were unfortunate, and men forgot them soon; but men remembered Captain Newport, who had done much to found Virginia. So they began to think and write Newport’s Newce, perhaps even to confuse the second part with Neuse River. Then in trying to make sense they wrote Newport News, and so it remained. Thus with men and names, as with fishes in the sea, the greater often swallow up the smaller.”
-Names on the Land, George R. Stewart
The fives horses not of the apocalypse, not even remotely
One of the things I like about this photo, besides the horses themselves, is that you can see how gentle the landscape is in southwestern Virginia. See the sBR in blue here.
It’s my birthday and I’ll do laundry if I want to.
Yeah. Welcome to 39, self. I took the day off but don’t have any plans. Laundry is looming though. no, really. It is looming in the form of two large piles of mostly towels.
In other news, one of my neighbors has started getting bolder and going door to door to ask for money. This is what she does when not working the metro and bus stop for grocery money to feed her kids, of which she has none by the way. Just a minor detail there. not sure what, if anything, to do about this, but am thinking about it because she is getting bolder and I don’t know what that means yet.
The weather is insanely gorgeous here. If it got above 85 all weekend, I will be surprised. mostly, it didn’t get above 80. Amazing. Weird. And yet I still managed, through the haze, to get sunburned yesterday (shoulders).
There’s not a lot to report right now. It’s quiet. I like it.
I should go do some laundry, shouldn’t I?
