That Bird

There’s been this mockingbird outside my house chattering away almost every night for the last 6 weeks or so. I hear him start up before I ever go to bed, and most mornings, he’s still going until around 5:30 AM. I know this because I’ve woken up at 5 and still heard him, but 5:30 seems to be his stopping point. I’ve read a couple of websites that seem to have a variety of claims…mostly that it is a male with no mate and once he finds his fucking true love, he will shut the hell up. Then there’s this guy, who claims it’s territorial and somewhat desperate. And then there’s a bunch of websites that warn me I can’t do anything to hurt the bird; it’s against the law. And one crazy ass person who says I should carefully listen to the damn bird (which I have done, trust me, for hours) and eventually my body will consider it a lullaby and fall asleep quite happily while listening to it. That guy is on crack.

There were two nights last week when he was silent (finally got a date?), but now he’s back in full force, and I again have the pillow over my head. This isn’t gonna fly when it gets really hot, so hopefully he’ll either move (seriously, same guy comes back every year) or find a female. Now. In fact, I’m willing to find one for him. There must be some older, slightly chubby, female mockingbird out there somewhere who would love to live in that tree.

Sleep. It’s for the weak.

Seriously, I’m up early today for a meeting (ugh) and I’m already tired from staying up too late again tracing stuff. I had a union meeting AND book club, and then came home and dealt with grades again (getting close to the end, hallelujah)…and still managed to trace some stuff. Did I clean the house? Fuck no. I did not.

I’m getting closer to done though…in the mid 1400’s…

Back to watching Outlander after finishing Magicians. Both have their painful moments.

The problem is that I’m happily tracing away and NOT watching the clock, and then when I look at it, I’m shocked by how late it is, and THEN, instead of just stopping right there, I finish whatever logical section I’m working on before I go to bed. Because. Shut up. It was hard to stop last night. I only have 500 pieces to go.

So I traced a tiger, a cat, and a heart. Oh. And another lung. I have most of the torso done at this point…just some flowers on the one breast at this point.

Then I have an arm left. And the head. And then I’m done. I have about 4 yards of Wonder Under traced so far. No doubt that the larger pieces of the head and arm will take it to 6 yards.

Kitten came out…she’s not very friendly with puppy.

But she deigned to sit on the desk and watch for things outside. Should introduce her to the mockingbird. Meanwhile, Simba went bonkers running around last night, barking at Calli, trying to get her to play. Eventually Calli came to me, all worried. Why? Why is he doing that? What does he want? It’s amusing. Exhausting, but amusing.

So tonight, I will hopefully get another batch of pieces traced. If I weren’t so tired, I’d go for broke…I could be done by Friday night, but I know I probably won’t be. Unfortunate. Although once grades are done, I can then just cut stuff out at night without having to fit grades in there as well. That should help my goal of being done by the time I get out of school…we’ll see. I would get BETTER sleep if that damn bird would get his ass out of the tree and force himself to get out and about to meet the womenfolk.