thingies.

Thing 1: Put 'er there.
Someone at work sent me a video that had told the story of a half-dead pitbull puppy showing up on somebody's porch. The person was going to take it to the pound because of all the nasty things they'd heard about pitbulls, but a soft-hearted sister convinced him not to. Fast forward a year, and the dog is happy, healthy, and knows all kinds of tricks. I watched this and immediately felt bad that my dog could not pick which hand held the coin. She can sit and lie down and roll over. But I thought it would be neat to teach her to shake paws. Then later, we'd move on to teaching her to bake cookies, use the toilet, and fold laundry.

She learned to shake in about two minutes, and I felt like an idiot for not teaching it to her sooner. I also felt sort of irrationally angry, as if she had known how to shake the whole time and yet had not told me. Why hadn't she come up to me and offered her paw when we first met?

Thing 2: Jeepers Creepers.
I've been buying up interesting books to rip up and turn into paper decorations. Among those books were three organ music books that I bought because they had sheet music on colored paper. Once I found myself the owner of an organ (and after I had cooled down about that fact), I dug them out and gave them to Josh, who immediately sat down to learn to play "Jeepers Creepers, Where'd You Get Those Peepers." The books had specific instructions about how to use all the befuddling buttons on the organ, such as the spectretone setting. Sometimes it is cool that I happen to have just the right thing already stashed somewhere, and sometimes it's actually a little embarrassing. Either way, I guess Josh and I deserve each other.

Thing 3: I found a feather.
I now have two feathers in my house, picked up outside and kept for being beautiful natural objects. The other one is blue with black stripes. They are kept tucked into the trim of the shade on my beloved bird bath lamp. Like anyone who spent a lot of time outdoors as a kid, I've found enough feathers to make at least one mismatched flightless bird, but I can't recall ever having found a red feather. I don't know that something as ho-hum as "I found a feather" counts for a Thing for someone out of elementary school. But I did take a picture, and then I wrote this little paragraph, so that counts as enough, right?

I found a feather. It's red.