Better

Play, that was the ticket.

"We are the FAST children!"

My crankiness started to abate as soon as Penny Cooper piped up, demanding she be let out of the shoulder bag at the lake to puff at dandelion clocks.

She in herself cracks me up, but also, taking this photo cheered me up by reminding me that I want to figure out how to use my iPhone camera:
I wanted to show the fluff blowing away, but that takes two hands. There must be gadgets I can use to stand the phone up and to press the shutter remotely.

["Press the shutter"? I suppose that's like saying "dial the phone." I  want to learn the new terms.]
I'm excited to learn how to do toy photography better.

Penny Cooper is the only Orphan Red whose voice I can "hear".
That's because when bink and I took Mz to an Ethiopian restaurant for her birthday last month, a little girl about Penny's age (eight) came in with her family and started piping in a high little-girl voice, 
"Is that chicken? I smell chicken." And she added, authoritatively, "I know what chicken smells like." 

Mz said, "That sounds like Penny Cooper."

Anyway, it makes sense that Penny Cooper is the one who talks to the humans. She, a Gemini, is the Communications Officer.

I grok what the others want, and "say", but they don't actually talk to me. 
They're really only interested in one another––"We are dolls" (obviously the best thing to be, in their minds). They are basically uninterested in human comings and goings, except as transport. 
I find that refreshing.

SweePo played in the crab apple petals that had blown into piles like snow drifts. 

(I could catch petals in the air because the wind was blowing.)

Another thing to do: 
finish SweePo's jeans. (I'd had to stop sewing in Duluth when I lost my needle--I'd dropped it, I'm sorry to say, in the grass under a picnic table. I felt all over but couldn't find it--hope no one steps on it...)

Also, the Advocate for Bears (that would be Penny Cooper) points out that lots of bears here are still waiting for the Bear Beautification Program (that would be me) to get its act together.

So, I have lots of good work ahead of me. Yay!

At my paid job, I am going to keep trying to focus on my actual, limited sphere--the BOOK's.
My frustration grows whenever I step outside that sphere. So I just deleted a couple paragraphs I wrote about the latest bit of quicksand there.
I don't care.
(You know I do, but I am practicing not.)

I like these instructions from the BBC on what to do if you find yourself in wet quicksand [which, this interesting article says, is not as dangerous as it appears, as it frequently does, in 1960s movies--dry quicksand (such as grain) is the stuff to worry about]:

"The idea is to stay calm (which might be easier said than done), lean back and spread out, to spread your weight more evenly, and wait until you float back up to the surface."

Wait till you float! OK, then.