Lots and lots of painting at my desk these days. Fortunately there’s a great big movie screen of things happening in front of me that I sneak peeks at sometimes. Last week I looked down on a hovercraft going past.
And down on a plane. Can you see him? This still cracks me up, looking down on a plane. He’d gotten pretty far away and was starting to circle around before I got my camera up this time but sometimes you look down and a plane or helicopter flying past just beside the trees, sometimes so close you can kind of sort of see the pilot. 
I looked down through my dirty window and reflected self at this guy and asked him why he poked apart my garbage this week. Hard to tell in this picture but the ravens here are huge, brilliant, and just ooze old soul-ness. If he wants to pick through my garbage I might just let him.
That tree to the right of him puts on a show for me in August when a squirrel comes and cuts down all of those cones just developing now. He hangs upside down to chew one off the branch, stops for a quick taste test to make sure it’s up to his quality control standards, then is on to the next. A cone-harvesting beast of a machine. I wonder if for a squirrel that job is what working in a chocolate factory would be for me. They say you get over it and stop being tempted. I’m thinking no.
And once I looked out to see a teeny little owl huddled up in that tree, looking back at me. Still grin over that one.
Last week I looked up at this little little guy. Feisty. Can you see him? A tiny hummingbird on the top left branch. He was checking out this tree but his usual real estate is to the left in front of my bedroom window, right on the very tip top of another tree. The whole time I work I hear him out there lipping off and chasing rivals and then landing and surveying his kingdom. A teensy weensy little package of sass. A few weeks ago when he was trying to impress the girls he had this fabulous dance he does where he flies straight up, high high high, pauses at the top and then dive bombs straight down, narrowly missing trees and curious big things. As he pulls out of his dive he gives four quick little cheep/chuckles and then heads straight up again. One of my favourite spring sounds.
And when my office gets stuffy in the afternoon and my eyes start to cross from painting little tiny stitches I turn my head to the left, look out my office door through to my bedroom and think briefly how nice a nap would feel. It’s just a front. Even when the kids were babies I never figured out that daytime nap thing. They weren’t so hot at it either.
When I wake up in the morning I look straight ahead out those windows. If it’s gray and gloomy I listen for rain and think about digging back under the blankets. If it’s a gorgeous sunny day I am once again amazed by that. We never take sun for granted on the West Coast. If it’s a sunny day in the summer I think about how many hours until I can get my work done and be out the door and down to the beach.
At night if it’s clear I look out at the stars. Even if it’s been a hot, hot day and I’ve had to pull down my blinds to keep the heat out (Good luck. Imagine the sun bouncing off that water all day. My house steams in the summer) I open them at nighttime so I can see those stars. And over the winter the moon takes a path down across the sky and behind the island right in front of me, leaving a bright path on the water and letting me wake up with moonlight blanketing me. You either love that or it makes you a little quirky and odd. Jury is still out on how I do with it. Shhh.
