Yesterday I took a walk to the library to return some books and pick some some new holds on my hold list. I was making the daring move of returning some books I hadn’t read. My book list is pretty big (for me, at any rate) and I’m not getting as much time to read as I might like lately, and so I just screwed my courage to the sticking point and culled a couple of weighty-non-fictions and wished them well in their future careers and put them in the bag and got ready to go. This is the drama in my life, you understand. It’s pretty whirlwind around here.
It was a pretty nice day outside so I thought I’d dredge up my horrid camera from wherever I usually keep it and bring it along, in case I saw anything cool.
The first thing I saw were some little pink flowers. They were a little less blurry in real life, but it was very windy.
And then, almost immediately afterward, I saw some little green flowers. Not even ten minutes into my walk, pink and green flowers both. Well worth lugging the camera along, I think you’ll agree.
Loo loo loo. Ah, springtime! Flowers everywhere!
When all of a sudden, this:
Yes, a LOBSTER. A very small LOBSTER. On the STREET on the way to the LIBRARY. Did it jump out of someone’s grocery bag on the way up the steps, preferring a quick and dramatic death on asphalt to a slow one in a pot of boiling water? Did it wash up from the lake? And what’s with the extra claw, there? Is it broken off from the lobster itself, or did it have some sort of fight with a crab? Why is it a lobster of such tininess? Why is it on the street? On the way to the library? I have no idea, but I was pretty thrilled to have had my camera with me, as I can tell you are by that vacant expression on your face.
Okay, well, moving on. Back to flowers, okay. That’s enough marine life for one day, don’t you think? (Or IS it?)
Here is a nice big pink cherry tree in front of the library. No lobsters or other inappropriate crustaceans in sight.
And here is a nice closeup of the cherry blossoms. I mean, it’s a nice closeup in the larger version of this picture, but of course I can’t figure out how to format it online. While I was sticking my head up into the branches to take this picture I seriously considered getting a tattoo of a cherry blossom. Wouldn’t that be pretty?
And here is a lovely azalea (I think) on the way home. Except BREAKING NEWS! Anne-Carolyn informs me that it is in fact a camellia, not an azalea. Okay then! Camellia!
And another closeup of some sort of pink flower buds, also on the way home.
Here’s what my reading list looked like when I got home.
Probably you can’t read the titles at this size, but rest assured they are all quite erudite. Library books on the left (I culled!) and books Gael gave me last book club on the right.
And this is what our mantelpiece is looking like lately.
Wait, what’s that on the left?
Could it be the coolest freaking plate in the history of the world?
It certainly could.
I am, seriously, so pleased with myself. Nothing you say will ever convince me otherwise. I told my mom all about it on the phone today and how great the tentacles look and how well I did the suckers (with puffy paint!), because if you’re going to brag on how awesome you are at painting octopuses (freestyle! No model!) on ceramic plates, pretty much the only person who will listen is your mom. Well, and your online readership, I guess. Anyway, she said she remembered when I took marine biology in high school I used to be pretty good at drawing sand dollars and basket stars and things like that, and I’m pleased to say she’s right. That was probably the only science class in which I ever did well, and was certainly the only time I was ever remotely good at any type of drawing. When I was at the Natural History museum in London I even tried to draw some of the specimens they had there (mostly echinoderms because I love them and also they are pretty easy to draw) but I didn’t have a pencil so I had to draw in ink and somehow that didn’t work as well. Anyway. This is my octopus plate, of which I am extremely proud and which you can currently find on display at my house, should you come to visit me any time soon.
