The Black Balloon

This morning I woke up early, way earlier than I wanted to get up. But since I was awake, I opened the blinds and made a cup of tea and settled in for a half hour of reading before I started my day.

There was something weird with the light and I turned around and saw this black balloon bobbing outside the bedroom window.

Since I watch way too much TV, my first thought was, "Omigod, we've been targeted by the black balloon killer."

I got up for a better look and thought maybe all our neighbors had black balloons. Maybe we were supposed to be honoring fallen Vancouverites for some sort of special occasion.




Only our house had a black balloon but it was windy so it seemed like a strange task that someone would put a balloon outside our window so I guess it escaped from a party somewhere and ended up in our yard.

In this shot you can see it's attached to another phallic balloon. I don't know what was going on in our neighborhood last night but I guess we missed something.

I shut the blinds. I said, "I don't want that balloon looking at us."



I've had this recipe sitting on my kitchen counter for a couple weeks. I had some beet greens that needed attention and this looked like fun. But then by the time I rounded up the hominy the beet greens were long gone.

This morning I went to the farmer's market for beets and cilantro. So now I had everything I needed and then the recipe disappeared. At least we have the internet. The soup was good but a tad bland but a scoop of spicy salsa verde, also from the farmer's market made it perfect.

The photo shows my farmer's market flowers and my recipe folder. That isn't my recipe file — just the stuff I've clipped in the past several weeks. I always clip way more than I make. It's like the book section. Every time I read it I mark about three books to read but since I'm currently reading about one book every 2 months, I'll never be able to keep up.

On the way home from the market we saw huge black billowing smoke coming from the train station.

"Should we go look?" I asked Bob. "YES," he said. So drove down there and it was the recycling center. No one seemed alarmed so after about three minutes of admiring the stinky fire we turned around and then the world's longest freight train had to go by on another track and we had to sit there for about 15 minutes and since I wanted to get home, I wasn't amused.

I finished the first draft of my story this afternoon. It isn't pretty and there's a scene that goes on way too long but at least I have something to work with. We've just finished our roasted garlic cilantro broth beet greens and hominy soup and it's time for some mindless TV before bed.