May 6, 2026

Where: the neighborhood

When: 5:15 pm

Bird Species: common grackle, European starling, song sparrow, house sparrow, white-breasted nuthatch, American robin, mourning dove, red-bellied woodpecker, blue jay

Things I Thought About:

• I have that song from Waitress in my head, and that is how we know that I am still feeling immensely sorry for myself today. "That's me," I sniffle, neither pregnant nor robbed nor abused. Snap out of it, idiot.
• One can feel sorry for oneself after a root planing, I think. Which I have every four months. My face is sore and I'm groggy from the half a Xanax I have to take to get in the chair. I have a had a really bad time with some dentists, and I have a lot of anxiety about it. I am a kitty cat you have to load up with gabapentin to stuff in the carrier, and it took four tries to find a long term periodontic practice that doesn't hurt me and isn't mean to me about my fucked up mouth.
• That debilitating anxiety is part of why I require an unpleasant periodontic procedure every four months and low-key have had a toothache for two and half years.
• The other part, of course, are the self-care habits that one fails to develop whilst being a blackout drunk for the better part of a decade, and from not having dental insurance until I was 38 years old.
• Also smoking 35 cigarettes a day for 23 years. That never catches up with anyone, does it.
• It is wild how I know I will blog all this pitiful shit, which I would not say to a new person I meet until we've known each other for at least six and a half years.
• Oh, that nuthatch is cute. He's been strolling down that tree, winding in and out of those twining vines, all the way down. This is a bird I really like to watch, he's so fussy and quick.

• I have spent a lot of time staring at a full tree thinking, I am looking right this bird, I know this bird is right in front of me, but it is so annoying when it's a mockingbird. You can usually depend on a mockingbird to be posted up somewhere, showing off.
• I do not like the musical Waitress. I think it has bad messages; its morals are confusing. The prop work is the best I've ever seen though.
• Sara Barareilles writes some really good songs. Good lyrics, good to sing along to. And Girls 5Eva is a lot of fun.
• She is married to the guy on Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, and met him when he was playing her abusive husband in Waitress. A common showmance dynamic, falling for the villain and your antagonist. Non-actors find this weird, but in my experience the actors playing the bad guy are often even more considerate and respectful out of character than they might otherwise be. Ted Levine was great friends with Brooke Smith when filming The Silence of the Lambs. I love that story.
• I wish I could see a gray catbird. I'd love to talk about him on the blog. I was on a roll for a while, there, wishing for a bird and then manifesting it, but not so much since the trees got big.
• It's nice to stand outside in a cool breeze and watch a woodpecker while swaying a little and thinking about nothing while your meds wear off.
• I bet a long birding walk would be fun high. I...I actually can't believe I've never considered this before.
• The periodontist tells me I am stable; he is literally the only one who thinks so.

BOTD: red-bellied woodpecker. I was just kind of idling around with no object in mind for tonight's blog, and heard her drumming and found her low in a tree right by someone's house. They were watching out the window and waved and beckoned their permission for me to come up the driveway and see her better, which made me feel good. I like how she wasn't just drumming, she was occasionally stopping to nibble on those little buds or berries. Do I know for sure this was a female woodpecker? Not for certain, but she had a very female energy.