I drove Claire out to Coastal Camp this morning.

Some explanation for the non-USonians may be called for: school is out, and thanks to the weird counterintuitive school calendar around here this means we rejoice in our graduating-kindergartener’s company for the next eleven weeks. Fortunately everyone else is in the same boat, so there are many options for parking your beloved short person with responsible adults during the working day. I went a bit mad with credit cards back in February, and Claire got the classic career mom’s overcompensatory holidays: spring break at Acrosports, then this camp, a science camp in Noe and a Mandarin immersion program over the summer.

My God, but Rodeo Lagoon is beautiful in the morning. It’s a green-grey, steep-sided valley, full of wildflowers, that opens out to the green-grey Pacific. Flocks of turkeys walked around gobbling; Claire found them hilarious. I left her with the very sweet and competent camp counselors, and she grinned and gave me two thumbs up as I drove away. It felt like ripping my heart out. These days my separation anxiety is worse than hers. I suspect that trend will continue.

Three deer walked in front of my car and stopped and looked at me with their lovely inhuman expressionless faces, like models. One had a scruffy little fawn, white spots still bright on its rump.

How come grownups don’t get summer camp?

Our number came up at Good Prospect Community Garden! Right now the plot is a mess of artichoke, sage and lemon verbena, but we’re going to cut it all back and plant cherry toms and summer squash! There are lemons and limes and apples and pears and concord grapes and raspberries and it is SO VERY BEAUTIFUL that words cannot adequately describe.

And today I rode Fluffy the Seagull the Horse the Bicycle part of the way to work. Check me out! I am all San Franciscan and sustainable and stuff!

Great news from my international network of business partners (with thanks to Google Translate, which now has a Detect Language feature that is distinctly from the future):

Si Caroline is great businessman with his wife and
thence they nakabili a new set of fishing net as another
source of income.Her Crab vending previous project is still on-going to
where every week he sells in the city of Calamba.

The goal of Si Caroline’s fishing business is to generate enough income to send those adorable children to school. At my end, my 48 Kiva loans are repaying almost faster than I can reinvest the proceeds. My default rate, incidentally, is well under 3%. America’s bailed-out investment bankers can kiss my progressive, apple-shaped ass.

Said apple didn’t fall far from the tree. My Dad, recovering warmonger, is also busy saving the world, starting with rural New South Wales.

On our way back from collecting Jeremy in Tamworth, we passed a huge sand monitor on the southbound lane of State Highway 95, also known as Fossickers Way. I thought it was alive; Dad and Jeremy said it was dead. Dad turned around to look. I was all “Be careful!” but my big atheisticky skeptical papa said “He’s my totem animal,” so that was the end of that.

The goanna was dead of course – half his poor head was gone – and he stank to high heaven, but he was so beautiful, his patterned skin almost unmarked, the green double-chins still iridescent in the sun. Dad got a little shovel out of the back of the Terios and put him over on the side of the road, so that the carrion-eaters who fed on his carcass wouldn’t also be hit by cars.

Dad says they are called racehorse monitors because they can run so fast, and that he once knew a pet one called Phar Lap.

XTREEM CUTENSS ZOMG

dsc_8472.jpg

Originally uploaded by Goop on the lens

That dog is eight weeks and three days old. He was beset by adoring children for about two hours. All he did was kiss them and wag his little knuckle of a tail. Chouchou, you rock.

dsc_8494.jpg

Originally uploaded by Goop on the lens

World’s sweetest toddler meets world’s sweetest puppy. Everyone in range dies of teh cute.

dsc_8139.jpg

Originally uploaded by Goop on the lens

I feel almost human again.

I don’t want to claim to be running again, but I have been out twice in a week. It reminds me how much I love our hill. On Sunday, on the way up, I saw a hummingbird standing in the air among the Eugenia Street callistemon.

Then, when I got to the top of the hill, the red-tailed hawk that lives in the pines flew directly over my head to the hillside. He was so close I could see the sky between his tail feathers.

He glared at me gazing at him, his eyes yellow and mad, then he flew up and back over my head. Something trailed from his talons that I thought were jesses until I realized it was the tail of the mouse he’d just caught.

I love my rugrats
I love to read and write
I love my neighborhood
I love the sky at night
I love the whole world
It’s made of particles
Boom de yada boom de yada
Boom de yada boom de yada

I love the calculus
I love my Twitter pals
I love good restaurants
I love the animals
I love the whole world
The solar system too
Boom de yada, boom de yada
Boom de yada, boom de yada

I love Antarctica
I love organic farms
I love the BBC
I love your loving arms
I love the whole world
It’s where I keep my stuff
Boom de yada, boom de yada
Boom de yada, boom de yada

Great newses! First up, massive man-love between my Viable Paradise crushees Cory and Leonard. Second, much-wanted and hoped-for twins, born on April Fool’s! Small siblings to big sister born on Halloween! It is all very cheering.

ETA: BABY OWLS.