This Saturday, I had pretty close to a perfect day - add a couple hours of writing and the calm serenity that comes from job security, and well, it would have been absolutely too edgy to exist. As it was, I just about glowed all day long, feeling my kudos and the splendid possibility that soon I will have rock-solid abs of steel ball-bearings upon which I can roll myself along every tough-girl possibility out there (I've been highly irritated to find myself 15lbs overweight for the first time in four years, really, and I'm damn sick of trying to squeeze, at best, into pants that were loose last summer; so while trying to remain patient with myself, I'm also setting up a daily regime of exercise, so's to become a Superhero again).

Anyhow, back to the perfect day. Well, I had finally gotten over my bitchiness, which was really actually quite bitchy. It was a combo of That Time of Month, and getting upset with a good friend for the first time ever (with her). It's hard to know what to do when you experience emotions for the first time and they're not so clearcut that you can simply state them and get over it, but instead need to think about whether you're being a jerk for feeling upset in the first place.

How was that for vague?

Well, the gist, why not, is that my first week here, my friend called to say she had canceled her July trip to WA, and well, this visit (and a promised kayaking trip along with it) was something I had been looking forward to and holding up in my mind as indication that I wouldn't eternally be solitudinous in the PacNorthwest wilderness, and also, I've been missing this friend & was excited to catch up in person. But alas, my friend had canceled this trip for something she's more excited about, and that smarted, really... part of my bitchiness was related to the apparent discrepancy between anticipations, i.e. it made me feel unloved and unworthy, which is harsh business coming from a best friend. Anyhow, Saturday started being a good day because I had called her, told her I was upset and then made up with her and felt a better about things, and far less inclined to sulk.

So, after morning coffees on the front porch (morning sun, hummingbird feeder, four flowering pots and a succulent pot), I got going and went down the Saturday market in B'ham, which has become an intensely happening and busy event since I've moved away... it's very much like the street festivals I got excited about as a kid, and the stuff for sale at this mart - food and pottery and plants and outdoor items and woolie t-shirts with cute sayings - is good stuff, nothing to snuff my nose at (as some people have seemed to think I might do now that I've become an amazingly erudite urbanite).

I was fairly overwhelmed by the number of people and would have preferred a quiet place to enjoy people-watching, but even the stairs I used to sit on for gawking purposes have become little hubs of ice-cream and shaved-ice eating, with four ballerina-clad blond children drooling colored items down their pink fru-tus. And so, I was rather quick, wandering for a bit, eating two samosas (not the same as mimosas, by the way), and buying myself the most adorable patio-tomato plant ever (for my back patio: red-bricked, table-clad with umbrella, afternoon sun, three plant-boxes awaiting the kitchen baby sunflowers, sweet peas, and wallflowers). It's the cutest tomato plant ever, let me repeat, and I have named him Siegfried.

Then I left, came back home, settled Siegfried, and picked up my number one recent treat, which I bought myself to make everything seem okay while I look for a job and get really really super-buff and sultry tangy waterbabish:


Lo and behold, my water-puppy, which was very cheapy and not the best in the world, a little tippy (must practice rolls when my back is slightly better) and such, but something I can easily lift myself and toss on the top of my car and shuttle out in, by myself and solita without having to desperately try to rope a friend into going with me.


And so, on nearly-perfect Saturday I fed this heron. That's right, I fed it (not, as my father heard me, "shot it" but gavith of the food). Picked up a couple of floater fish that had been tossed back by some nice fisherman, and paddled gently into the lily pads, tossing the fish about five feet away from my boat and watching the heron swoop down and scoop them up with one slurp of his slurper. He then eyed me as if to indicate by the broad cleft in his eyebrow-tufts that I had not, in fact, provided him with sufficient food-substances for him to consider following me home and letting me name him something literary. Next time.

I then paddled for a couple of hours, raced home, and went to see the Roller Betties, some of whom were very hot, and all of whom where entertaining and ferociously athletic. Since then, I've been trying to come up with great Roller Betty names to name my plants. So far, the best is Broadknee Dangerfield (alt. BangHerField). I then went out pool-playing, had a hotdog, then went dancing, more pool-playing (I'm due to go to work soon, so am speeding through this), more dancing, meeting of new people (didn't make too much of an ass of myself although a little bit of an ass), back to dancing and then home. Nearly perfect day.

By the way, I'm also reading Lolita and I think it's pretty twisted. Am I alone in thinking it's twisted?