Hummingbird Achievement Unlocked

Sunday was my dad's birthday.  He's thirty years older than I am, which means we celebrated his 54th birthday (hat tip to LGL for that math bon mot).  We had a quiet family gathering and lunch.  Afterward, Mark and The Child performed astounding magic card tricks.

My folks have a hummingbird feeder which they keep stocked year round.  Accordingly, they have some resident hummingbirds living around their house.  Over the last four months, I've tied to photograph one of the little guys who has a regular perch in a maple tree at the edge of a deck.  It turns out that the tree is just far enough away, the hummingbird is just twitchy enough, and my camera's auto-focus is just confused enough that I managed to get some artistic photographs of tree twigs with a fuzzy, bejeweled blur. 

This time, I decided to stake out the hummingbird feeder.  The feeder's resident champion hovered a challenge at me before deciding that I wasn't going to try to steal any sugar-water, and I managed to get a few shots, before it flew off to chase some rivals away.  While it was occupied, some of the other hummingbirds visited, and I took their photographs, too.

More here:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/ZVdnrxWsn9RGQvRv7

Balancing Writing with Parenting

Waiting in the parking lot for school to get out and the kids to find their parents' cars is one of those writer's opportunties to observe character.

For example, someone's just gotten out of her car and into the station wagon she's just parked next to.  She's got her gloves in one hand and a sheaf of papers in front of her as she speaks to the wagon's driver (I can't see if the other driver is a man or a woman).  

Another woman gets out of a van across the lot and arranging small rolling airline baggage in the back, and walks over to a small hatchback.  She and the hatchback's driver, another woman, arrange a spare tire in the back of the hatchback and the two of them wrestle the luggage into place.

In a Toyota, slowly cooling as heat seats out through the floorboards, a bored dad is rocking out to ABBA's "Take a Chance" while he types up the activities of the parking lot -- his fingers flying over the iPad's touch screen.  If this were a story he'd be the detective, and the other parents would be smugglers, spies, or secret lovers.  The papers would be government plans or private coorospondence; the luggage would hold supplies for refugees to be delivered to a safe house.

Ah, the kids come running across the street and into the parking lot.  We all go home.

Now... how to turn this into a short story.

Like Father, Like Son

The other day Mark took a picture of my dad and me.

Here it is.  We both have similar noses and eyebrows.  And shirts. And possibly wrinkles.  Although our hands look similar, I very definitely have my maternal grandmother's hands (as does my cousin, Kevin).  My dad works with his hands more than I do, and subsequently probably has stronger ones.  I'm trying to decide if we have the same shape to our skulls, but I can't tell with all my hair.

What this photo does not show is that we both have similar voices and a similar sense of humor.  When Mark once heard my mom telling a story about one of my dad's joke outfits, he yelled, "Help! It's genetic!"  Oh, yeah; my sister says that after that one Fourth of July, we're not allowed to have drinks and then launch into The DeMolay Routine (which invariably devolves into Monty Python skits...).