Up early and what a racket!

Sunday morning. (Photo by Katy Buchanan)

One of the ways life changes with age is the diminishing capacity for sleep. (Note: I am not saying need for sleep, just capacity. Big difference.) That diminishing capacity means wakefulness during hours, that, in youth, I would have been thoughtlessly enjoying sleep. That diminishing capacity also means that, that same wakefulness blesses me with the gradual noise of early mornings.

The 3 a.m. quiet, with cat sitting at an open window. Me at my laptop, checking email and newspapers. Then an increasing racketing of bird song, so that by 5 a.m.-ish the world outside is a symphony of chirps and calls. (Cat has abandoned window by this point and is snoozing in his basket.)

It's prime bird time and I would not be alive to it were it not for the fact that I can't sleep. I think there is some irony involved here. Birds are wide awake, but that's because it's their job.

Anyway, I love the before-dawn chorus. It really is a racket, and I can hear layers of songs, some close, others a bit farther away.

As an aside, one night last week I watched swallows dipping and diving in the 5 p.m.-ish sky, near my Mom's house, chasing after bugs for their evening meal. They are pretty birds. Glad I noticed, but could not help but wonder what a small number of them were flitting about.

Pretty sky in Pittsburgh this morning, too.

Little bird

The building that I work in is old. A modernization attempt sometime in the 1950s or 60s resulted in its yellow brick facade being layered over with a metal grid.

Ugly to humans, irresistible to birds.

So, every spring, tiny nestlings fall from their precarious nests and squawk on the sidewalk. And sadly become little fledgling corpses.

Tonight, however, I witnessed one brave little avian soul survive the worst of all odds: Rush hour traffic.

I am waiting for the bus, and hearing a persistent chitter. Yes, it is a baby bird on the sidewalk. It hops toward the curb, away from the building, underneath the sandaled feet of a young man, who slows briefly to ponder this noisy little creature.

It hops further toward the curb and into the street.

It hops, squawking away, all the way across Boulevard of the Allies, pausing briefly under a Jeep, as if under a mother's protective wing.

I dart out briefly in a pause in traffic, trying to redirect it back to the closest point of safety. Fellow patrons of the Port Authority look on in sympathy and mild amusement.

Silly. Little bird is intent on the other side and ignores my directions.

Hop and hop. All the way across, making racket to ward off death by SUV.

All the way to safety and the green grass of the other side.

Little bird, you are a hero!

Shake Up at La VieC!

I’m sitting in my living room, thunder rolling outside in a very rainy dusk. Power is out, but the laptop has a full battery. Still daylight-ish, and I am wishing it was a Saturday or Sunday morning (as it was not when this was written) so I could be snuggling under the bedcovers and drowsing to the symphony of thunder and rain. Another wish: I wish I had another good day for every day that I wished time away.

(Warning! Another paragraph beginning with “I” to follow.)

I have been mentally constructing a new direction for this blog. I do fairly well, usually, writing off the cuff, but off the cuff has no structure. So, new direction means “topics,” as the Mackenzie Brothers of Second City TV called them. Structure means schedule and so I will address each of these topics in a Sunday and Wednesday posting schedule. Posting every day, I have come to realize is unrealistic and exhausting.

This list will be edited down for expediency, but as of now, here are the subjects I want to cover:
*Art and Design
*Birds and Dogs (birds, with help from family, dogs, mostly mine)
*Family and Girlfriends.
*Pittsburgh (My Mom was born here!)
And the occasional piece of whimsy, craziness and/or sarcastic humor. That last will be a challenge. I (think I) have become a more compassionate/less critical person thanks to therapy but I hope I have not lost my very precious prickliness (VPP).

Shall I call it Katy And? No, there will be no voting on the name. None of this community crap. I will decide, you will read.

Love and air kisses.

Kate