Another memory of my recent interactions with a child:

I was on the one couch with her dad and baby brother, and my (half Sudanese) (half British) friend was on the other couch with her young daughter and she had pulled up a take-out menu online on her laptop to see what we could get for dinner, and when I came over to sit on the other couch next to her and check out the food and what we could maybe order, their daughter was like, "You can't sit here, you're a boy."

. . .

(That story stuck with me, because it jibes with news articles I've read that point out how from a very young age children tune in to gender roles and begin enforcing them; it's interesting, too, that she even categorized the very young baby as a boy, and grouped me and her dad together with him.)

A typo found in a mid-20th c. sci-fi book that I was reading:

At the top of page 198, they forgot to put in closing double quotation marks after a short bit of dialogue (and so I went and took a pencil and gently sketched them in).

A dream of something broken.

Last month I dreamnt -

I'm sitting down by my front door in my cottage and am going to put on my nice boots that I bought this winter, and as I have my leg up and rested on my knee and I lift up a boot to put on, there's a horizontal crack about two inches up paralleling the heel, where the rubber got all brittle and cracked, and when I see this, I become angry that my boots fell apart, again, since it just seemed like I had went out and bought them..

And then, I wake up.

. . .

Addendum addendum.

Like the week before the tree removal, I was walking up by the lake park just north of me, and the (skinny) (tanned) (teenage girl) worker was locking up the paddle boats for the day.

"So how was business today?", this (older) (white) guy sitting out on a retaining wall by the lakefront was like. "Looked busy."

And, she said it was.

. . .

I feel like there's a lot of conversations like that around here, where people just sit out and watch other people doing stuff and then talk with them about what they're doing.

It's like time just rolls forward so leisurely, and there's always more of it.

Addendum.

"Would you look at that?", the armpit hair tree removal guy said to the others, pointing to a small tree by the newly built fence at the edge of the yard.

It turns out that my landlord hadn't planned right for the new fence, and instead of removing a slat or putting a shorter slat in so the tree trunk could stay where it was, he sanded down into it like an inch or two, and so he left this huge smooth shaved gouge going down into the trunk of the tree, and then he went and put a normal fence slat right there where sanding down the tree had freed up the room.

"I've never seen that before," the armpit hair tree removal guy was like. "I wonder what he used to do that," he then added, meaning the sanding or whatever.

They all then agreed that the tree would really show that it took a hit next year, and it wouldn't last too long after that.

"That one's gonna end up in your neighbor's yard," one of them was like.

Tree removal.

So, a few weeks ago in the afternoon I was getting ready to go get a haircut, when I see someone in an bright orange t-shirt go across the backyard in front of my house, and as I pull my blinds down and get ready to go and I step outside, it turns out that it's the tree removal people who came to take care of the tree of heaven that's in the backyard in front of my house and grew up next to another native tree and has been choking it out.

"Is that your car?", they're like, pointing to the car of the one of the college kids from upfront, that was parked behind the fence in the back alley.

"No, it's my neighbor's," I was like, and I led them around front to show them the door that leads to their apartment.

And, the tree removal guys knocked and knocked, and the one knocking said that music was playing so they were home, and the music had stopped for a bit and then started up again, but he couldn't figure it out, and he guessed they could still do it with the crane even if the car was parked.

Meanwhile, I was talking with another guy, who was telling me that trees of heaven are crap and are brittle and can split and fall really easy.

"If I was your landlord, I'd take that other one out, too," the (young) (bearded) (tatted) (white) tree removal guy in a wifebeater and who had profuse untrimmed armpit hair was like. "Those Siberian maples are crap."

And, he said that if you pull it up with a crane and let it hang and put a bucket underneath it, you can get five gallons of water quick, easy, the water comes out of that tree so fast.

"Did you see the water bleeding out of it where a branch was cut?", he was like. "It's like that, but worse."

I told him that it made sense to leave it for the shade, but I was wondering if it would recover.

"You can do that," he was like, and then he said that it would recover fast, you'd be surprised, but especially next spring, and the other guys gave expressions of rough agreement.

I then said that I wasn't sure if it would stand up in storms, it's so spindly, and the guy was like, "You'd be surprised, I had a tree stand in one of those for deer hunting, and the wind blows, and I'm sitting there, and it goes like this four feet back and forth, but it stood, those trees'll stand."

One also added that for a storm, that kind of tree survives better than sturdier and more rigid trees, like the one hanging over the north end of my back cottage.

Later, after my haircut, I came back and the tree of heaven was mostly gone, and it was just this giant trunk dangling like forty feet up like ten feet away from my neighbor's car, from the crane parked like five feet in back of my neighbor's car, where his car was like all boxed in by tree removing equipment and the giant tree being removed.

And, I don't drive, but if I did, I sure wouldn't want my car there.

At one point, too, I also mentioned to the tree removal workers that after that tree of heaven is now out, "I bet the squirrels are confused as f*ck," and then I explained that that was one of their favorite paths, to hop down onto the roof of my cottage.

Animal feat.

A few weeks ago I was taking a walk back from the pharmacy, and I cut through this one mini-park that winds by a creek, where there's these big sandbag embankments going steep up with all of this grass and moss and whatnot growing over them.

And, I turn a corner, and there's like an adolescent bunny just hanging out on the middle of the path, and as I take one more step, he turns and bolts and uses footholds and goes like straight up the eight-to-nine feet of very steep sandbags and disappears over the top.

And then, I notice that vegetation isn't really growing there where the bunny bolted up the wall, and that at the top you can see grass growing on either side, but not right at the section at the top where he hurtled over and disappeared.

So, it was like a path, and that bunny and potentially others have probably done that more than once.

What a great way to trick predators.