Pristine Tranquil Honey
pristine: what’s your coffee order?
I usually have a biggish coffee drink of some kind in the early- to mid-afternoon. If I forget I wake up the following day with a slight caffeine-withdrawal headache. Not proud of that, but it has become a thing.
The version I make most often is iced coffee from the home-brewed pot I made a day or two before. I mix in some sugar (half a teaspoon, maybe, for about 14 ounces of coffee?) then throw in a bunch of ice and finally some half-and-half (if I’m being self-indulgent) or milk and watch it curdle around. I like that part.
tranquil: what’s something you do every day?
The most me-specific thing is probably the daily eBird list. My personal rule is that it must be a “complete”/non-“incidental” list (which is an eBird thing meaning I was actively birding as a focused activity and am listing every bird I was able to identify). My current streak (which dates pretty precisely to when the current obsessive interest kicked in after a lifetime of more-casual birding) is:
Lately (or in the past, when I’ve had a cold or flu or whatever) the list has sometimes just been me standing in my tiny backyard. In those cases my rule is that I have to bird for at least 10 minutes. This morning’s was one of those. After waking up I was in the bathroom doing what one does (sorry; tmi) and out the window saw some distant swallows. One species that I know has recently begun migrating through is Violet-green Swallow, and these looked like they might be those. But the current zeitgeist requires obsessive hand-washing even before excessive birding, and by the time I could get outside with my bins they were gone. But I figured I might as well do my daily list, and just as the mandatory 10 minutes was coming to a close I saw the same or a different flock flying over, and mixed in with the expected Cliff Swallows were a number of Violet-greens, huzzah!
honey: what’s your favourite memory?
Oh wow. There are so many to choose from.
I’m going to pick this one: I’m 4 or 5, in the backyard of the house on Hilton Dr. My grandparents are visiting from back east, and I’m sitting with my grandmother. She points out a mockingbird on the lawn. “When it flies you’ll see white flashes in its wings. You can always tell a mocker by the white flashes in its wings.” And then it does fly, and the flashes are there.
I don’t really remember the bird, or the house. But I remember her smile, and her voice, and the way her hair curled around her head.
Reposted from https://lies.tumblr.com/post/613400652154093568.
Tags: localareamom.
