Laundromats and Wildlife.

I went to the laundromat today. Big mistake, because it is Sunday, and even though this is the Bible Belt, these people still do all their laundry on Sunday. It was packed. I wanted to go out to eat with my kids, who were enjoying an incredible meal at Sunny Point but alas, I couldn't leave my clothes alone to fend for themselves. It was okay, though, they bought me huevos rancheros to go. The laundromat on Sunday morning is somehow eternal; I think I've just been there so many times that it takes on this feeling of eternity and inevitability: as it was, is now, and ever shall be - dryer 3 doesn't work. There were the Mexican men washing machines full of jeans and talking about movies in fast Spanish; the young couple folding towels; the blonde guy asleep with his arms folded protectively over his laptop, the nape of his neck childlike and vulnerable. I leaned on a washing machine and reread Walker Percy Love Among the Ruins which I just found at the Goodwill and which was obviously somebody's high school copy, because it is helpfully annotated with various really dumb notes.

Last night when M & I were coming home from the Zydepunks we saw a possum cross the road. I stopped the car so the possum could get his/her head together and actually cross the road, and then s/he walked up the sidewalk. I leaned out of the car to really look at the possum (I like possums) and in return the possum gave me a long suffering look of total disinterest and veered into the small patch of scrub woods that edges the elementary school. I was inexplicably cheered by this encounter and kept bugging M, who really doesn't care about possums, to discuss and marvel over it, but finally he refused to comment further.

This afternoon I took M back up to school in Celo. The skies were stormy and mysterious and broke into patches of Renaissance blue, but when we started heading up through Micaville to Celo they suddenly became very intense and dramatic, with half the mountain illuminated and half under dark, roiling clouds. "LO!" I intoned, "Doom from the skies doth fall upon the southern valley of the river of the Toe!" and I made M take this picture out the car window, which accounts for the weird reflection that makes it look like God's Discman was descending on us. There were three deer by the road once we got up by the school, and they were also less than interested in us; big, beautiful does. I dropped M off under the non caring gaze of the deer and made my way back through the boiling clouds; halfway between Burnsville and the interstate a heron appeared, flying low and laboriously between the ridgeline and my car.

So, you know, signs and portents. Right?