rain, squirrel battles, and yoga

Between last Friday night and Saturday early morning we got a little over 2” of rain from two storms. The wind was so high with the trees thrashing around during the one that blew through in the wee hours of Saturday morning that it woke me up. Or it could have been all the lightning and thunder. Needless to say I had a panicked unconsolable dog on my hands, or my head as the case may be. I went out later to see that the ground was littered with twigs, sticks, small and large branches as if we had had a hurricane blow through. It took me all day to pick them up during several sorties out throughout the day. Here's a pic. The pile on the right had been accumulating over a period of a couple of week. The one on the left was Saturday's gather and it doesn't even include the branches small enough to mow over.

The teacup bird feeder is broken again. I've been battling the squirrels over it. Usually by this time I've taken it down for the summer because of the squirrels but there's a handsome young male cardinal who comes to the shrubby tree outside the window looking for it throughout the day and if it's not there and I'm sitting where he can see me he will look directly at me and chirp and never moves far when I open the door to hang it for him. (Yes the pictures are all poor quality but they're all I got.) 

But then the squirrels see it and I have to take it down again. They are such pigs, they'll empty it. There's one young little girl squirrel who just doesn't understand why she can't see it after I take it down. She's all over the shrubby tree looking for it from different angles or on the roof or perched on the hook with just her head showing at the top of the window or she will leap onto the screen to see if she can see it from there. 

Drives the dog berserk. So basically I put it out, take it down, put it out, take it down, put it out, take it down. Sunday I thought I had a good idea. I got some admittedly old and lightweight fishing line and strung it between the hook under the eave and the branch that sticks out the farthest and hung the teacup on that. The cardinal was happy, 

the little girl squirrel was thwarted. She tried all kinds of ways to reach it but she was not brave enough to make the leap which I figured if she did it would probably knock it off the line anyway and get broken. At one point she just sat in the tree looking right at me as if to make me feel ashamed so I took pity on her and set some shelled pecans out for her though it took her some time to get brave enough to get them. 

Took the teacup down Sunday night, put it back out Monday morning, went to the feed store and got more stump/brush killer and sprayed it full strength on the poison ivy that refuses to die, took my shower, was drying off when there was a crash, looked out the window to see the fishing line broken, the teacup on the ground and the saucer broken, and a squirrel hauling ass away. 

I don't think it was the little girl but one of the fully adult ones (though this is her in the picture above, she just came to investigate). Probably the one I tried to give a heart attack or at least make it think twice about getting on the bird feeder (didn't work) when I ran at it screaming after sneaking the back door open. Little bastard jumped onto the top of my naked lady, took a flying leap from there into the tallow knocking her over and breaking her in half. To be fair, she was already cracked in the middle. So now I have to get some concrete adhesive and put her back together.

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I think I mentioned that Abby started her in person yoga classes back up a couple of weeks ago. I decided yesterday that I would go last night though I was very nervous about it even though as also mentioned it's in a big metal building with big wall sections that roll up on 3 sides making it essentially an outdoor space and big enough for us to be far apart. Once I got over my nervousness with everyone glad to see me back, I was glad to be there. I'm still doing my 20 minute routine every morning but I'm bored with it and was glad to be doing some different asanas. Obviously some of my nervousness was because the virus is still very much with us but also I think it was because a new habit had been formed, one where I just didn't leave the house except for short necessary excursions. The habit had been to go without question, then to not go without question, so last night I was having to actively go against not going. I thought I would just go once a week at first, but fuck that. I'll probably go tomorrow too.

Still have done no artwork besides those two little drawings I did in the first weeks of quarantine but I am thinking about it more. Especially since we're having days in the low 90s already.