Pileated and pink yet again

The pileated woodpeckers have been showing up with some regularity, which is pretty good because most of our guests have never seen one. When we can point to two of them on the same tree, it makes our place seem a bit more exotic.

That plus the 31 flamingos now flanking the drive in two groups, of course.

The flamingos had been down in the back, looming out like an ominous avian invasion for the sake of Chris and Linda's visit way back when. When John was giving Rose directions on how to get here, we suggested he tell her to look for the house with the flamingos, and Tom went to move a dozen out by the entrance to the drive where they would be easily seen. Then he set the remaining 19 up in a line emerging out of the shade of the opposite side of the drive near the house.

I was off from work today, and this morning I finished grading a paper from a student in Australia, did dishes and laundry, mopped the kitchen floor -- which was a huge mess -- , washed the car (almost as big a mess as the kitchen floor), picked up the audio version of Running with Scissors (another Augusten Burroughs book) at the library and wrote some more on my own latest attempt at a book. I am up to about 30 pages. That may not sound like much, but it consists of the opening pages of every chapter except the final one, and it is coming along.

Laura, the librarian who supervises the volunteers, checked out the Burroughs book for me and mentioned how interesting it was. I told her I had recently listened to Dry and thought I would check out this one, the story of his childhood. His childhood was quite bizarre -- this book was made into a movie -- with an alcoholic father and a poet-mother who gave him away to her therapist when he was twelve years old. Burroughs (that's him as an adult in the photo) had dropped out of school, or rather just refused to go (imitating his older brother, apparently, who pulled the same stunt) and his mother didn't know how to deal with him. So she just gave him to the shrink. The story does not get any more normal after that, apparently. Laura told me to fast forward through it if it got to be too much.

The family of the psychiatrist sued him over the book, which he called a memoir, claiming that he had made up many of the wilder episodes and slandered them. Although Burroughs insisted that the book was completely true and accurate, he did agree to modify some introductory remarks and to refer to it in the future as a "book" and not a memoir. It is still called a memoir on the cover and title page, however. I understand some money also changed hands, as is usual in these situations.