Om

It snowed here this weekend. In fact, Mom says there's snow on the ground in 49 states! (I'm not entirely sure what that means, but it sounds impressive.) I know I've never seen this much snow before.

This is what it looked like outside our back door yesterday morning.

It was pretty, before the sun got on it, but it's kind of disturbing, the way it changes the light. I've been kind of agitated in the mornings since it fell, and so has Larry Bird been.

But what I wanted to tell you about today isn't really about snow: Mom has taken up meditating again. She did it once before, for a good couple of months, about two years ago then she kind of fell out of the habit. She says she's been doing this on-again, off-again thing with it since she was in college. I don't really understand "college" but I do get that she's old (she'd be really old if she were a Grey!) and she's been doing the meditation thing since she was only a little older than me. But she signed up for a class last week, and now she's at it again.

It's been so long since the last time that she can't find her mala beads so she's just focusing on her breathing. I think it's crossed her mind that I may have done something with her beads. I would if I could, too, because not only do they look tempting to eat, but also they're on a really pretty red string. But I didn't. I mean, how could I? I'd have to get hold of them first, and she's never given me the opportunity.

But I digress. Mom says when she meditates she's trying to clear her mind and stay "present." Like a lot of things about humans, that strikes me as odd. I mean, I'm always in the present moment: Where else could you be? And we birds never think about our breathing unless there's a problem, like when we don't feel good or something. But she has problems sometimes, because she's allergic to Bane, so maybe that's it. Anyway, she sat down and tried to meditate yesterday morning late, and boy did everything in the house seem to conspire against it!

In the first place, as I said, Larry and I were both kind of agitated yesterday morning, what with all that bright light streaming into our room. I tried to help Mom by saying "Ommmmm!" once in a while, but Larry was doing his "Eek! Eek!" thing. Usually he's kind of quiet. If he "talks" at all, it's this really rapid thing Mom calls "chirtling." He goes so fast I can't understand him at all, really. But there's nothing difficult to understand about "Eek!" and it's so piercingly loud you can't get away from it either. He was not, as Mom would say, a happy camper. I kept pinning at him but it didn't do any good. And I could see Mom flinch every time he did it.

Plus, it was windy and it was getting warm outside, and snow kept falling off the trees and landing on the roof. Everytime the roof went "Thunk!" I could see her flinch at that, too. Then the phone rang. She'd remembered to turn off the ringer, but forgot to turn off the message reminder. So now we have "Thunk! Eek! Beep!" going on constantly while she's trying to meditate.

I kept trying to help her out by pinning at Larry and saying "Ommm!" every once in awhile, but as I said, I don't think it helped much, because it wasn't too much longer before she got up and went in the back of our nestbox and took a nap. Naps, now, that I understand.

Riley 

Éminence grise