Visit the kelpforest....

I saw a very sweet thing driving to work this morning. I made a right turn from Seal Beach Blvd. onto Lampson to head to my office, and ahead of me, saw a police car stopped in the right lane with its lights flashing. At first I thought someone was being pulled over, but then I noticed the cop walking around his car to the lawn. I was kind of trapped behind him for a few minutes as car behind me were all going around, and it was then I noticed the puddle in the gutter next to the police car contained about six ducklings. Mama duck was anxiously going back and forth on the grass above them, and the officer was trying to help the babies get up the curb to mom. Although every time he got on one side of them, they would run the other direction. The last I saw before I finally was able to move was that he had gotten some sort of flat object out of the car to either herd them a bit more effieciently, or to place against the curb so they could hop up. I don't know how it worked out, but it was nice to see him stopping traffic to help out the wildlife, at least.

In other encounters with local law enforcement, Saturday evening I turned in a intoxicated driver. Angus, Avalon and I were going to check out a nearby geocache, but when I turned onto Goldenwest, I noticed a black Silverado pickup in front of me that weaved in the lane, then drifted left and the tires bounced off the curb of the island in the middle of the street. Then he went the other direction. I decided to keep him in front of me so I could keep an eye on him. He contined weaving and was having serious problems staying in his lane. As it happened we both got into the same lane to turn left on Garfield. He sat for awhile after the light turned green - all the other cars had gone - and then turned so wide he almost hit the curb again, narrowly missing a pedstrian who holding his child and waiting to cross the street. That's when I decided he needed to be reported. I called 911, and I guess I must have sounded pretty excited, because they told me I was talking too fast and to calm down. The officer said not to do anything crazy to keep up with him, but to try and keep him in sight; someone was being sent after him. They kept me on the phone until a motorcycle caught up with us at the Warner/Edwards signal (where he did the same thing as in the left turn lane). Thereupon, they put their lights on and pulled him over on the other side of the signal. I was instructed to pull onto a residential street in the officer wanted to talk to me. After waiting for about 15 minutes, I called the number they'd told me to, and a female officer said they had my cell phone number and I was free to leave. Made it too dark to get to the geocache, but we had a nice walk nevertheless. The officer who'd pulled the guy over called me later in the evening and said the guy had been "heavily medicated" and shouldn't have been driving at all. Seriously, I hear about pedestrians and bicylists getting hit by people driving off the road quite often, and the thought has crossed my mind while I'm waiting at a bus stop with semis whooshing by at 50 mph not six feet from where I'm sitting. It's a scary thought. Keep your kids outta the street, Mama duck.

Lessee, what lately...

• I donated blood again Friday. When I pulled up to the park, the police helicopter was hovering directly overhead and shining its floodlights on the front door of one of the apartments in the complex across the street. It was really low, and people were standing outside the complex and the park building, shading their eyes in a "WTH?!" manner. There were no police cars on the ground or in the vicinity as far as I could tell. runsamuck tells me they will often focus the lights on one thing as a distraction while they are using the heat sensors (or whatever the hell they have) on something else.
  
  
  
  Lake Park
  Huntington Beach CA
  Casio EX-Z80A
  27 February 2009
  
  
  
  Another man and I were the last people there; although all the staff were polite and still trying to joke around, you could tell they were tired and anxious to get out of there. The nurse cleaning my arm was scrubbing so hard with the iodine swab it felt like she was using sandpaper. Then the jab seemed quick enough but my elbow felt sore for the rest of the evening. Equipment was being broken down and packed while we were lying there being drained. However, after we were done and had sat sipping juice for our requisite 10 minutes, they told us we could take as many snacks along as we liked as perqs for being last of the day. I grabbed a package of cookies for each of the kids. I wound up going to sleep much earlier than usual just because my arm was achy and I could not make it comfortable. I still have a bruise.



• Avalon came home from school last weekend with a temperature, and not really any other symptoms last weekend. It faded over the weekend, but then she started complaining of sore legs, so much so that she was barely able to walk. She thought she felt well enough to go to Dismalland Sunday evening, but after two rides she did not want to walk anymore, and kept wanting to sit down. runsamuck took her to the doctor again, and they couldn't find anything wrong, but had her bring back a urine sample to make sure of anything else. She couldn't manage it herself and he wasn't allowed to go in the restroom with her (this presaged a whole rant from him once home, on how if he were a single parent he wouldn't be allowed to help his daughter buy clothes - father's rights really being one of his sore points). Anyhow, she was nearly in tears walking to class the next couple of days; it finally faded but we're at a loss to figure out exactly what caused it - she swears she hadn't done any exercise to make her legs that sore. And really she's the most active and athletic of our kids, so stuff like that usually wouldn't bother her.



• I went by myself to Angus's IEP, because one of us had to get the other two fry ready for school - I wish we could both go, because runsamuck is much better at coming up with questions than I am. However, I take better notes than he does. Angus has been making progress on all of his goals, although he's still behind in math, which is frustrating because it used to be one of his better subjects. His writing has improved dramatically, which I noticed on a social studies project on Native Americans he had done (which really he only got marked down on because he didn't label some of his illustrations). One of the goals, using cartoon bubbles to describe what characters in a story were feeling, was not made by the teacher who was supposed to be applying it and she didn't really understand how she was to go about it, so that one was going to be modified. I know he reads better than he lets on; I know this because he knows all kinds of random facts on his favorite topics (notably Bionicles), which I know he's read off one website or other. However, at home he'll come and ask me to read something to him, when I know darn well he can read it himself; then he makes frustrated noises when I have him read it to me. Also, he often spends recess in the library (so he doesn't have to interact, so it's quieter?) and they are trying to get him to interact more - which makes me think of this blog entry by an autistic person and this one as well. I don't know that the same thing is occuring with him, but I know I sometimes feel like I'm slogging through syrup when I'm expected to be a part of a conversation - either things don't occur to me or some one else will get to it just before I open my mouth to say the same thing. It's better just to listen, sometimes. In any case, there is supposed to be another IEP before the end of the year to meet with his upcoming middle school teachers, since he'll be in sixth grade. I think it'll be nice that he'll be closer to home, and that there will be people from his old school that he knows, that he's missed, may make some things a bit easier for him.



• Been seeing Western bluebirds around the office again; I think this is the third year in a row. I didn't even realize we had them in this area before I saw them here, but I'm told they always have been. There were two great blue herons on the lawn as well, hunting gophers. One of them must have been a juvenile, as his plumage didn't look quite so sharply defined between gray and white.



• I have really got to get to work in the yard...(and the house, and our room, etc. ad nauseum...)

...returning you to your regularly scheduled ELJaying...

Something I forgot to write about.

One afternoon over the weekend, Gareth came in from the front yard and said, "Mom there's a pelican on the sidewalk."

Now I should know not to just dismiss what he says out of hand, especially after the 'possum incident, but we were getting ready to head to the store, and I was busy haranguing everyone to get their shoes on and get ready to go, so I just kind of said, "Right, ok..." and continued collecting shoes etc. I doubted it was a pelican; we do live a mile from the beach, but you seldom see pelicans away from the water, and certainly not in a residential neighborhood. We see cormorants fly overhead quite often, but not pelicans.

We walked outside to get in the car, and directly across the street was a police car, pulled in at an angle to curb, with the yellow lights on its light bar blinking. Cops in our neighborhood are not really unusual; we live a block away from the police station and they often park on our street to do their paperwork before heading in. This officer, however, was standing on the sidewalk, looking at something further up. And I could have sworn, as he stood there, that I saw him reach up to his holstered pistol and unsnap the strap over it. This made me a bit nervous, and instead of driving past him, I elected to make a U-turn from my parking space and go the other direction. As I did, I had clear view up the sidewalk where the policeman was looking.

And there, indeed, stood a juvenile pelican. Brown head and back, white belly. I really should believe Gareth now, when he tells me these things.

As we went out to Main Street and passed the police station, I saw an Animal Contral truck exiting the police parking lot; I'll bet it was on the way to pick the bird up. There has been some sicko recently deliberately breaking the wings of pelicans off Bolsa Chica, close to here, and I wonder if this bird was injured; however, there have been a lot of hungry young birds recently struggling to find food recently as well - the linked blog cites young birds also being found in unexpected places searching for food, a bit farther down.

Still, I wonder what the officer unstrapping his gun thought the pelican was going to do? They can't bite (very hard, anyway), and their long beaks are too unwieldy to even peck very efficiently - that's not what they're designed for. They might buffet you with their wings a bit, I suppose, but I don't think they could really injure you. They might damage you if they dive bombed you from straight overhead, but they not going to attack from the ground.