Pretty good day, today. The morning was lazy and lazed into the afternoon. I was in danger of not leaving the house at all, which would have been a tremendous mistake; 75-degrees, sunny, nice breeze, not a weekend. I rallied after lunch and headed out on my bicycle.Through the tunnel and down to the lake. I'd intended to sit at Colman Beach with a book, but took a detour down to Seward Park, round the point and back up to Colman. There, I watch two dopey guys lope out of the water with turtles they'd found--or turtle-napped--from a the shady spot nearby where several turtles live. They declared their intention to race the stolen testudines on the lawn. Shockingly, the critters didn't respond to their trainers' verbal prompts, and sat totally still. A good move for the turtles: the dopes got bored put them back in the water.
You'd think that was the end, but at that point a woman in a yellow duck inner-tube floated by and scolded the dopes for not returning the turtles to the shady shore where they'd found them. Something about shade and goose poop and death--I didn't totally get it, but giving your spurned, pet turtle a ride home seemed like a reasonable gesture. The dopes didn't get it either: they apologized to duck woman, but didn't re-enter the water to retrieve the turtles. So duck woman exited her craft and dove for the reptiles. Good work, duck woman.
I was again--for the second time this week--without sunscreen on a sunny day...in the sun. I feared returning home, while an effective sun-screen, would mean sitting at the computer reading blogs and flying to Puka Puka and the like with Google Earth, so I decided instead to check out Medgar Evers Pool for some lap swimming (first choice was Colman Pool in West Seattle, but there's a masters swim meet there and the pool is closed to the public for three days).
Now, one might wonder why (risk of sunburn notwithstanding) I might choose to leave a perfectly good lake on a warm day and pay to swim indoors. Brooke, in fact, asked just this question.
My reply: milfoil. Nasty, nasty stuff. According to Cornell's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology:Eurasian watermilfoil is a long, slender plant that grows underwater. It has a round, light colored stem with flat, feather-like leaves. In water less than 30-35 feet deep, watermilfoil can form dense stands that often reach to the surface.And it's gross, and monsters live in it. If there's a monster in the pool, I'll see it and leave. Milfoil-dwelling monsters just reach right up and grab you from their creepy, slimy houses in the weeds. You never know until it's too late, and you're caught, like some dumb turtle, and made to race.
So I went to the pool, and had a very nice time, and wasn't killed by monsters. I wasn't even scared, thank you.
The hour of chaos was near, so I returned home, made dinner for Zoe & Elliott to ignore (though Elliott did eat Zoe's edamame, and didn't choke, and wasn't killed by monsters either). Played outside with the girls and neighbors, Zoe to bed sans hassle, dinner, and an episode of Weeds (season three, too good).
Et voila. Man of leisure. Journal entry complete.
Maybe tomorrow, sea monster.
