fflo | if it looks like a duck

Seems my basement isn't duck-proof.

Thought I saw movement down there around midday but decided it'd been my own shadow. Then this evening, in the further-back basement room to un-pop the circuitbreaker, I heard movement back in the other. Looked back & there it was, walking away from me.

I think it was a duck. It didn't quack like a duck, but it sorta walked like a duck. And it did look like a duck. I didn't get a long look before it disappeared from view; by the time I'd found the flashlight & my courage, it was nowhere to be found.

I'm figuring either (a) it got out however it got in or (b) I'm seeing things.

But there IS that thing about if it looks like a duck.

Coincidence was out on the town last night, making it look like the Universe had something to say to me. Really Rosario was the prime mover, suggesting Lila Downs to begin with, and then leading us from there. But it's easy to imagine the Fates were up to something.

Isabel Allende was on public radio this morning. Half-awake, I heard her talking about letting spirits live with us. She was speaking of her dead daughter, who doesn't appear to her as a ghost but lives in her heart (and is, thus, with her), and of her (also dead) mother, to whom she writes a letter every day. My heart swelled with jealousy.

She went on to speak of the realistic as what we can explain, trying to have control. And that life isn't so down with that.

My inner storyteller spins tales whose explanations are in psychology. Cuz my inner storyteller can't escape the imperative to include herself in the story.

Just moved the laundry again. "Human in the basement!" I call out, as I go.

Finally installed the new dryer vent duct. The tube thing. Is that a duct? Looks like a duct... ha ha ha haaaa.

Think I'll take some days off work to futz about the house. Sure could use it.