Adventures in Taxidermy

Hi folks, Max the singing jeweler here…(I wonder if Max has a Wikipedia page. He should.) Thought I’d give you an update on the whole bird situation.

Y’know, they’re not around in the same numbers they were. I switched to another brand of small seed – in fact, I went a few days there without any small seed in the one feeder. Just sunflowers in the big one. That seemed to be the big draw anyway – mostly with the small seed, they just flipped it on the ground. The place is littered with all the millet they’ve tossed aside in search of the higher-quality grains. I just can’t bring myself to pay for the really good stuff that they go nuts over. So they must have learned that there wasn’t that much of interest and decided to look elsewhere. It’s hard to tell if this new brand is not popular, or if I have to build my rep back up. But the thing is that the sunflower seeds never went away – that was always kept full. But it’s emptying out at probably half the rate it used to. Maybe it’s the time of year. Are grackles migratory…? Because I swear, some days that was 90% of my business. And if the grackles are gone, that explains it. Should leave more room for the woodpeckers – who seem to be a lot badder than the grackles. They’re especially vigorous, I find, the woodpeckers – just seem stronger and more robust, more filled with surges of energy and life, than just about any other bird back there. Kind of like wolverines – always on the move, always looking like they’d just as soon run fifty miles or kill a caribou as scratch an itch. Boundless energy. I like woodpeckers. There’s a woodpecker blend one can buy, but it costs an arm and a leg.

So I’m working on the family video. Damn thing’s over 40 minutes long as it stands, just raw footage. I’ll have to just start whittling out the trash and see what it cooks down to, then see if I can come up with any narrative tools to move it along. Or maybe break it into three so each one will fit on Youtube. Gotta get me a DVD burner one of these days. Christmas list, if anybody’s taking notes.

Being separated from Q in terms of sports has worked out swimmingly. He’s been much more enthusiastic in practice of late, Janneke tells me – and this after already losing all signs of whininess or pouting as soon as I disappeared over the horizon. He’s become very spontaneously affectionate with me, and regularly sits down with a smile to say “Podemos hablar sobre los animales?” Something he hadn’t done for a long time. I think he has me categorized in a much more firmly “Papi” place now. It’s much more comfortable for both of us. Although yesterday, as he was telling me about practice, where he scored two goals and had what Janneke says was a very precocious and well-executed assist, and he told me that he had gotten around Brady by doing the move that I taught him. Not so much a move as a strategy – move to the right, and when the defender commits so much to that direction that it’ll be difficult for him to go the other way, break quickly left and get around him. A general sports kind of tactic – and he said it worked to perfection. What a good listener!

Although I did notice the other day that his shoulders were uneven. The right one rides considerably lower than the left – a centimeter or so, I’d say. I didn’t like it, and went on line, and found immediately documents all over the place that said “Around age 8, scoliosis can begin. Look for such tell-tale signs as uneven shoulders.”

I came to a few minutes later, blinking up at a circle of bewildered students. After I changed my pants and stopped hyperventilating, I dashed out of the nurse’s office and sent the link to Janneke, who immediately made an appointment for that afternoon. Q was more than happy to go when he found out it was to examine his back and his shoulders, since that would mean there would be no poking of anything into any orifices. He hates that.

And the doctor gave him an absolutely clean bill of health. Straight back, even leg length, strong muscles and bones all ‘round. Just got a droopy shoulder, which isn’t uncommon and which often goes away. Or doesn’t, and as long as it doesn’t hurt, so what. Big relief there. I told Dad, and he said he thought it was because of the pitching Q was doing in the spring. Typical of Dad: he says it, you guffaw and snort. And then an hour later, you drop the newspaper from in front of yourself, re-cross your slippers on the footstool, slide your pipe to the other side of your mouth, and say, “Well, heck-fire but if that doesn’t make some kind of sense…Good ol’ Pap!” Then you give a gruff head-tousle to your adoring Irish setter, chuckle softly to yourself, and go back to your paper, as the camera pans up to the mounted moose head that hangs in the shadows above you.

Been Skyping. Couple of times with Auntie Jayne, couple of times with Tia Dominique, once with the Bidis, with Tante Meggie as a bonus. And the kids are already pretty well jaded to it. Our connection has been getting slower and slower – I think it’s the DSL, but I’ve been filling up the memory here with all these video projects too. Could be that. Which doubtless makes me sound stupid to all you tech-savvy whipper-snappers out there. Well, laugh now, ‘cuz you’ll be crying at the funeral.

T and I took a good forty-mminute ride on the Burley piccolo the other day, and halfway through she informed me that she was going to close her eyes and sleep a while. So I talked frenetically to her the whole way, cajoling her into singing songs and asking her lots of detailed questions to keep her awake until we got home. Jeepers, she gave me a scare there. Thank goodness she told me rather than just drifting off and slumping to the ground. Guess it's not as much fun back there as she led me to believe it is.

All right, that’s it. Back to the videos. Labor of frickin’ love and all that…