BulgingButtons

June 19, 2015
by BulgingButtons Leave a comment

Summer in Phoenix

Hot is a dog who won’t go outside,

preferring instead to sprawl across the tile floor

directly across from the air vent

Hot is the sensation that your paper parking permit

Will spontaneously combust between your fingertips

As you remove it from your windshield

Hot is a ponytail, braid, or bun

Morning, noon, and night

Hot is driving home from work

With the air conditioning on high

and pulling into the garage

before the car has cooled down

Hot is feeling apprehension every time you turn the ignition key

and feeling gratitude every time the car starts

Hot is waiting until later in the day

when the shadows appear

to go into the backyard pool

Hot is floor fans, ceiling fans, wet cloths, and water bottles

Hot is planning on cold cereal and yogurt for dinner

Hot is finding the one parking spot under the scrawny Palo Verde Tree

just for a little bit of shade

Hot is laundry. So much laundry.

Hot is choosing shoes with thicker soles

so you don’t feel as much of the heat coming up from the pavement

Hot is watching movies like Ice Age and Frozen

Even if there are no children in the house

Hot is extra chemicals for the pool

and extra water for the lawn

Hot is Phoenix in the summer

and no surprise

Hot is the temporary price we pay to live here

For that reason only, hot is okay.

June 18, 2015
by BulgingButtons 2 Comments

There is a bird’s nest in our backyard. Not really in the yard, though, more like up under the patio cover next to the house. We see the birds fly in and out of there, and we can hear them on the wall outside our bedroom, but we can’t actually see the nest. I thought the babies had flown away a while ago, but either I was wrong or there is a new crop.

This afternoon while we were in the yard the dog nosed at something that moved. I told her to “leave it,” and remarkably, she did. Turns out it was a baby bird. This baby was far from the nest, and obviously injured. As I said, we don’t actually have access to the nest, and truthfully this little one might not have even come from there. What do you do with an injured baby bird?

Maybe, if you know anything about birds, you can attempt to rehabilitate it. I know nothing about birds, and frankly they kind of freak me out, up close. Putting it in the nest wasn’t an option, and even if we had, I doubt it would have survived. So what does that leave? A mercy killing? Maybe it would have been the kindest thing to do, but I couldn’t. I was a coward. I let nature take its course, and a little while later I found the little guy dead.

It was a bird. A common ordinary bird. There are millions of them, and not all of the babies survive, which is why they hatch multiple eggs at a time. I get it. Still, I feel badly about it. My head knows that in the grand scheme of things, that little bird’s death is just the way things work, but my heart is a little sad about it. I hope that little bird found some peace. I’m sorry little bird.

June 13, 2015
by BulgingButtons 2 Comments

Summer Writing Marathon

Have you ever thought about all the places writing hides?

That’s the question we posed to our summer writers, kids entering grades three through twelve. There are several of us teaching these kids at our local university this summer, and recently we took them on a writing marathon on an unusually rainy day.

The writers were split into age groups and we toured the campus, stopping along the way to learn about the various sites, then sitting down to write before sharing and moving on.

We stood on a bridge and watched traffic whiz below us, we sat single file in the middle of a palm lined pathway, and we got comfy in plush chairs in the basement of the student union. We also visited the snakes in the life sciences building, discovered a secret garden, and imagined ghosts roaming the halls of one of the oldest buildings on campus.

It was amazing how these experiences unlocked the creativity of the writers. Some included their observations into pieces they had already begun, while others were inspired to write brand new pieces, including several poems and at least two ghost stories.

I took the opportunity to write also, since I told the students that I wouldn’t ask them to do anything I wasn’t willing to do myself. I wrote about the rain, and the students, and what it must be like to live your days in a glass tank, like the snakes we saw. I also wrote about how important it is to slow down and really notice your surroundings. That writing marathon took us all over campus, but the best place it took us was deeper inside our minds.