Wednesday, 09/25/13
It’s raining. I think it rained most of the night. I should know because I was up twice nursing my injured hip and it was coming down pretty hard both times. It rained most of yesterday and the night before that, too. Being a pluviophle, I like this weather.
This morning during dorniveglia, I pandiculated and had a strong desire to feed my clinomania. I’ve been a clinomaniac all my life and never knew it had a name other than laziness.
This business with my hip has me off my game. When I am comfortable enough do something like write, I soon realize that I am too sleepy to stay awake to do anything. And I’m crazy. On Friday Marnie and I went out to do some errands and I put the mailbox key in my purse so I could get the mail on the way back in. When we got home the key was nowhere to be found. We went to get my new glasses and then to Harris Teeter. I don’t think I dropped it at either place, but I suppose I should call and ask.
Update 09/26/13 - Thursday Afternoon
This has been a funky week. I expected to hear from P in jail by now since I wrote him last Friday and said I opened a special account on the landline for him to call me. Today, a friend of his, Clay Wilson, called me to say he had spent the weekend with P. I didn’t ask any questions. I suppose he got a DUI. Anyway, he said P is doing well, that he is campaigning to become a trusty so he can get his sentence reduced by 30 days.
I don’t know how I feel about that. Life is easier without him around. I’m holding fast to my resolve to make him live elsewhere when he gets out of jail. I suppose I should get in touch with Lawrence and Melissa and start making some plans for an apartment or studio. The idea of once more setting him up in a place makes me want to pull my hair. The last place he lived was so awful, he was so scared when he moved out that he left his television set in his room. So we get to start all that over again - a TV, cable, dishes and linen and all that crap. I hope Lawrence will give him the bike that is at his house.
I am maybe a little depressed. I’m tired all the time and nothing seems very funny. It started with the pain pills I took after I hurt my hip. I haven’t taken any in two full days but I still feel out of it and lazy. I can’t walk very far and that’s not helping. And my hip is still very uncomfortable.
Around noon today when Honey and I went out for a little while, we walked toward the marina. I was looking straight ahead, which is the way I do, and Honey was pulling me to the left. When I glanced over, there stood a Great Egret just as still as a statue, right there in the middle of one of the side roads where people park their boat trailers. His neck was extended its full length, and I swear he looked closer to four feet tall than the usual three feet or so. He was as regal as any king.
Honey, Dumbass that she can be, didn’t notice the bird. She was all about a dog approaching from the other side. I could see the dog’s owner in the background, walking slowly and trying to quietly call off his pet, a curly haired terrier sort.
I knelt down and held on to Honey while we watched that magnificent bird just standing there like he owned the entire bluff. As the dog approached him, the egret extended his wings to their full expanse and flew off toward the river. I just stood there with my mouth hanging open and stared after the magnificent bird.
We see Great Egrets every day from our balcony. There are not only Egrets but Great Blue Herons and the occasional Wood Stork. In the mornings, they fly over toward Saint Simons Sound, where they feed, and when the sun is down but before it gets dark they return to their roosts farther north on the island.
When we lived on Dunbar Creek, we could look across the marsh with binoculars and watch Great Blue Herons nesting and feeding their young. Once we saw a Bald Eagle perched there. We used to watch Wood Storks fly over toward the sound in the mornings. Amazingly enough and in spite of all the development that has taken place on this island in the last two decades, there is a Wood Stork rookery near the north end.
The nesting area of those Great Blue Herons we enjoyed so much when we lived on Dunbar Creek, regrettably, is gone. The marsh hummock on which they nested was rezoned from "conservation" to "residential" so a rich person could build a house there. Seems he wanted his own island. Someone should have told him it was already occupied by the original owners.
I can happily say that I fought hard against the rezoning of that little piece of land. It was over ten years ago and many of us bird lovers knew it would only be a matter of time before someone went in with bulldozers and cleared some land on that hummock for a house. I guess the only thing to be glad of today is that it took so long.
