House Sparrow Booties

I wake up a quaratined brat with a bad attitude. A trapped pack rat with no way out.

I suppose that setting up a blanket in the field across the street might help.

Yes, it might. But sometimes my sunny little smartass self can’t be fully cured in an instant, despite what I often want to believe. Sometimes, I have to sit with it.

So I take my annoyed piss poor attitude, a blanket and a stack of too many books than I can read and plop myself in the open field.

And no, I don’t magically feel perfect. My scale keeps tipping back and forth because that’s just what happens sometimes when you’re an emotion/environment-driven acrobat who swings like a circus act from one mood to the next, dragging her fellow gymnasts who come tumbling with her when she feels herself going down.

So, anyway, my silly scale is tipping this way and that way and I think it might be a good mental practice to sit and watch while it happens.

Tipping to the more benevolent side feels promising as the sun soaks into my skin through my flannel while I listen to “Roses” by the Staves, which always seems to take me on a journey. But it flips right back up when a stupid man in a stupid car pulls up with a stupid freaking DRONE and starts flying it directly over my head. I plummet way back to the bratty end, but then come back again slightly as I laugh out loud thinking about how ridiculous the idea of a flying a drone is. The audacity of droners. Unbelievable.

Creatures all around, life and earth sounds abound (good side) when I notice a swarm of gnats above my head (hold my hand as together we plunge to the dark side and I punch the bug-filled air, looking like a deranged sun-sick fool, might I add). Then, the sight of a delightful little girl, adorned in full pink, riding on something that looks like a tiny motorized scooter without the handlebars (also pink) and seems to be far too small of a living being to ever be riding such a complex apparatus unattended; all whilst nonchalantly and almost sassily snacking on a granola bar (needless to say, I shoot to the joyful side of my unreliable scale.)

As you might have guessed, Sherlock that you are, I quickly bounce right back when I hear a group of three teenage boys walking a bulldog dog pass by, conversing about their particular strengths and weaknesses when it comes to driving a car (I’ve found that since being in isolation, my usual eaves dropping skills have enhanced at lest tenfold, given my dramatically decreased amount of human contact. I have developed the audacity to stare into the eyes of every passerby for far too long, quite obviously listening to conversations without a single iota of shame.)

Says one of the three stupid little shits: “I’m a decent driver, but every so often I get a little retarded and road-rage is the, like, only place I can take out my anger.” (Incredible! The r word! People still can’t grasp that one! Not to mention the concept of putting people’s lives in danger as a manifestation of this teenage angst you possess! Amazing!)

And now there are a couple of things that should be delights but feel more like sarcastic digs to me, kicking me while I’m down: A car with all windows rolls up but a radio volume that booms past the fortress shouting AT ME SPECIFICALLY, “this too shall pass,” I’m assuming from a Christian radio sermon or something—I don’t know, but I’m pissed about it.

Additionally, an older man and woman on their late afternoon walk, the man with a small speaker strapped around his waist, blasting the song “Hard to Say I’m Sorry” by Chicago... admittedly an absolute banger, but when I realize the title, I take it as a personal attack, or as a sign that this man expects me to APOLOGIZE for being QUARATINED against my WILL.

Anyway, I should mention as I wrap up this unbearably whiny, good-for-nothing account of my afternoon, sitting for two and a half hours on the blanket in the open field, which was supposed to be peaceful but instead gives me road-rage when I’m not even on the rode (notice how I didn’t use the r word when describing my road rage because I’m a decent human being??)—anyway, the entire time I’m in the field, I am surrounded by dozens of tiny house sparrows (which I typically find a bit annoying because they fly around in such access when I typically want to be wowed by a rare warbler or chickadee, like the real piece of work I am) but these little cutie patooties are right at my eye level as I lay on my stomach reading, and they are spreading themselves all over the field, me at the center of their arrangement, as they peck their little heads into the slightly overgrown grass. And while they do, all I can see are their little sparrow booties sticking straight up in the air like the little flirts they are.