Isn’t the English language – for all its difficulties – a wonderful thing?  I can use a word normally a noun as a verb and still be understood.  English is very versatile, if not THE most versatile language on the planet.

But I’m not just fascinated with the English language – oh no.  After all, that’s just one thing.  I’m a woman of many interests.  I’ve been called a Renaissance women, just recently, by someone who had no coaching at all to say so.

Perhaps to those of you who don’t birdwatch, sitting for hours observing birds, or trekking through miles of wooded trails, just for the chance to see something you haven’t seen before…. maybe you don’t get why someone would do that.  So I thought I’d take a few minutes to give you an idea of why it’s so fun.

Put aside for the moment the tree-hugging delights of simple being outdoors, in nature, among trees and other living things, in fresh air, or near a lake or river or stream.  That’s a big part of why I enjoy birding, but it’s not all of it.

And put aside for the moment that birds are beautiful creatures, often colorful, and with pretty songs that can identify the bird before you ever see it.

And put aside for the moment that just having something new to learn is fun in and of itself.  Each species of bird (and there are over 10,000 of them in the world; about 1000 in North America alone) is a new combination of colors, song, physical attributes, feeding, habitat and habits to learn about.

But here’s the clincher:  Birding is like a treasure hunt.  I can have a nice long hike, with my binoculars and/or camera, and I never know if, when, or what I may see.  Oh, I may have an idea that I’ll see many of the usual suspects – sparrows, grackles, cardinals, blue jays.  And sometimes I’ll not see any new birds at all.

But often, there will be one new and unexpected surprise that just pops up in front of my lens.  In Iowa last summer, it was the red-winged blackbird and cliff swallows.  Two weeks ago it was the tree swallow.  Last week, it was the yellow-rumped warbler (and me without my camera!).  This weekend, it was the ruby-crowned kinglet.

Yes, I took this photo.

It’s a treasure hunt.  And the treasure I get out of it are all those things I mentioned above.  As souvenirs, I take photos when I can and I get to see and learn new things.

Then I get to play with the photos on the computer, add them to my websites, or use them to make other art.  And that’s all goodness, too.

Today, I’ve added Ruby-Crowned Kinglets, White-Throated Sparrows, and Dark-Eyed Juncos to my Bird Compendium.

I made some decisions about my exercise focus yesterday.  There just isn’t time and energy enough for me to do running, weightlifting, and boxing equally, so something had to give.  For the next six months, I’m going to focus on running and boxing.  These will burn fat and increase my aerobic capacity.  Then over the winter months of next year, I’ll maintain those and shift the focus of my training back to weightlifting and put on muscle again.

The boxing room at my gym had the lights on yesterday, too, so I was able to do some punching and get a full, very happy-ing, workout completed.  Afterwards I sat in the steam room, then showered, and came home feeling great.  Endorphined-up. 

I called Powerhouse yesterday, too, and learned that they’re still waiting on a couple of permits before they can open, but it should be soon.  Yeah, right.  They’ve been saying that for 3 months.

I created a couple of food and exercise journals – and my (former, most recent) trainer has suggested that I make a custom cover for her so she can use them with her clients.  Plus, I’ve also made contact with a local massage therapist who needs her client intake forms redone.  Wild Pines Press is getting some work, which is very cool.

Anyway, the sun is finally shining again here in Northern Virginia and that alone makes it a happy day.  On my agenda: Wal-Mart, Groceries, Pet Supplies, and tonight… the Biggest Loser Finale!  Go Ali and Kelly!

This morning, we went for a 5 mile walk about Burke Lake.  We saw Herons, including one up close and personal which was really cool, Cormorants, Wood Ducks, Mallards, and – joy of joys – a Yellow-Rumped Warbler which was a complete surprise, a new lifer for me, and very cool.

(photo borrowed – not mine)

Then we had lunch at Red, Hot, & Blue.  I had Jambalya – yummy.  The only downside was that the people sitting in the booth next to us were non-stop talkers and it was annoying, but then after we left we got to make fun of everything they were saying, so that turned out fun after all.

(And let that be a lesson to all you talkers…we make fun of you behind your backs, since you give us so much ammunition.)

This weekend’s movies were: 
Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium (fell way short of what it tried to be),
The Mist (oh man, those monsters were something else! – really good movie with a tragic ending) and
Dan In Real Life (a wonderful romantic comedy – not sappy at all).

I blogged recently about the sad state of the boxing room at my current gym.  It’s a converted racquetball court.  The wooden blocks that make up the floor are coming loose or missing in spots.  There are no mirrors.  The punching dummy’s nose is coming off and leaking stuffing.  And the heavy bag is crooked and held together by duct tape.

Well, today when I went to do my boxing workout, the lights in the room weren’t working either.  The room was dark.  I did my cardio (treadmill) and jump roping (in the other racquetball court) and sit ups (incline bench), but didn’t get to punch anything.

Which is additionally sucky because I bought new heavy bag gloves yesterday and hoped to use them.

I’ll be SO glad when Powerhouse opens. 

I have finished adding new photos to My Bird Conpendium. 

Yesterday afternoon we had glorious weather here in Northern Virginia and I went on my first birding hike.  Burke Lake Park is a great place to do that.

I took 269 photos, including many of Barn Swallows (a lifer for me), a Heron (which I’d seen before but never gotten a photo of), Bluebirds (ditto), and some GREAT shots of a Red-Bellied Woodpecker.  I’ll be putting the best of those photos on my Bird Compendium in the next few days.

In the meantime, enjoy these.

Bluebird

And what trip to a lake would be complete without a float in a tree?

“You cannot box without committing yourself to being awake in your body; you cannot box without committing yourself to caring.  There is nothing nihilistic about boxing.  It is the opposite of cool.  There is no room for charade, no time for equivocation.  Boxing is a graphic confession of the desire to remain present and to persevere.”

“A long time ago I’d made a wrong turn and linked up freedom with abnegating the body.  Not such an unusual mistake, not for women, not for girls.  I’d had great hope in it, actually.  If only I could undo the knot binding self to flesh.  I’d had some success loosening it.  I just hadn’t quite figured out how to take that further step when I walked into the boxing gym, more or less by accident, and, not having words for anything yet, not understanding anything yet, I responded in a way that would force me to question all I thought I knew about being a woman.”

Today, in addition to the usual suspects, I saw….

Male and Female Cowbirds (only the second sighting of them so far this season)

a Nuthatch

and a happy happy surprise: 
A Red-Tailed Hawk!  That was exciting.

The weather is supposed to be really nice tomorrow afternoon, so I’m thinking I’ll head out to a nearby park with my camera for a birding hike.

“Like [Charles] Dicken’s dead-alive Florence Domby, for instance, Louisa May Alcott’s dying Beth March is a household saint, and the deathbed at which she surrenders herself to heaven is the ultimate shrine of the angel-woman’s mysteries.  At the same time, moreover, the aesthetic cult of ladylike fragility and delicate beauty – no doubt associated with the moral cult of the angel-woman – obliged ‘genteel’ women to ‘kill’ themselves…into art objects:  slim, pale, passive beings whose ‘charms’ eerily recalled the snowy, porcelain immobility of the dead.”

“Whether she becomes an objet d’art or a saint, however, it is the surrender of her self – of her personal comfort, her personal desires, or both – that is the beautiful angel-woman’s key act, while it is precisely this sacrifice which dooms her both to death and to heaven.  For to be selfless is not only to be noble, it is to be dead.  A life that has no story…is really a life of death, a death-in-life.  The ideal of ‘contemplative purity’ evokes, finally, both heaven and the grave.”

The authors don’t use the character of Melanie Wilkes from Gone with the Wind as an example because the book only covers 19th century literature, but when I read all that it was Melanie Wilkes I thought of.  I’ve heard people say they would rather envy Melanie than Scarlett O’Hara, but I’ve never understood that.  Melanie might have been satisfied with her lot in life (unlike Scarlett), and something of a saint, but she became sickly and dead.  She was a pale passive being, the perfect angel-woman according to male fantasy, and then she died.

Scarlett lived.  Scarlett lived and was strong and independent.  And you don’t really live a strong independent life without wanting, striving, succeeding, and sometimes failing. 

My favorite time of day is the nebulous gray time between first emerging from a dream and actually getting out of bed.  Images from the dream are still fresh, allowing me to glean any significance that might exist in them.  The bed is warm, cozy, and soft.  But best of all, streams of ideas and language often bubble up into my conscious mind.

Sometimes those bubbling thoughts don’t amount to much.  Sometimes they’re amusing or just surreal.

Sometimes, though, there’s a raw thread of gold ore that works it’s way though those thoughts and into a poem or other piece of art.  Or as an insight that gets recorded in my journal.

I keep pen and paper by the bed to record these first thoughts.  I’ve done this for many many years.

Do you do this too?