Still Wordless

This is quite weird. I ended up looking through a rubber stamp catalog with my mother while we waited for the CAT scan on Monday. (Which, contrary to what I'd read on the Internet, took only 20 minutes, not the predicted hour.) After we had exhausted the rather skimpy catalog and she went away to be scanned, I still didn't read any of the stuff I'd brought, but looked through a Sunset magazine. As in, looked at the pictures...

Today I caught up on some chores and spent the rest of the day working on cards, figuring out layouts, playing with new stamps and papers, experimenting with different techniques and creating an "inspiration journal" that is really more like a "bungling..." er... "exploration and problem-solving" journal.

Oh, and we've had a baby mockingbird that has just jumped out of the nest in our back yard today. Quigley started barking up a storm this morning and I went out to see what he had. The bird ran away as soon as Quig was distracted and I managed to intercede before he really pounced. Whenever he finds something new, his first reaction is to bark frantically and keep his distance. Then as he gets braver it crescendos into The Pounce. Which is very energetic and would probably crush a baby bird. If not, The Pounce is followed by The Bite-And-Shread.

Later, I thought the bird was gone, so we went out again. (He looks like he's right at the edge of actually flying, but so far all I've seen him do is run) Quigley found him right away. He was standing in the grapefruit tree treewell, staring at Quig who was not barking but sniffing very cautiously and with great interest. His nose got maybe 10 inches from the bird, when the baby opened its beak, flapped its wings and chirped, where upon Quigley backpedaled frantically and got out of there. When he recovered his courage and came back for more, I told him to leave it alone. (More like, "No, no, no! Leave the baby bird alone! No!"). He actually listened and obeyed, though, and we went back inside.

He's spent most of the day inside, which was fine since it was 109 outside, and he finds that too hot. He's been unusually lethargic ever since this heat wave got going. We took him on the three mile walk around the park last night and he was really dragging at the end. Even though the humidity's at about 10 percent , so the evaporative cooler's been working really well. Of course there wasn't a cooler on the walk, and it was still something like 99 when we were out there. But Quigley's still something of a puppy at 8 months and this is his first Arizona summer. Plus he gets to lie around in the house all day, so he's not really getting acccustomed to 100+ temps.

If the bird's still out there tomorrow, I think I'm going to try to take a picture.