9.7.04

i was sitting at my computer this morning surfing the internet and contemplating the re-organization of our bathroom cabinets when i looked out the window and saw a small animal lying on our concrete patio. oh my god, i thought, is that a bird? a dead bird? a dead bird infected with west nile virus?!?! i immediately got up and went outside to take a closer look. the poor thing wasn't dead; his eyes were open and he was panting heavily. he looked dazed. i poked him with a stick but he didn't move. oh god, the bird wasn't dead yet but he was obviously in the middle of dying and probably from west nile virus. dear god, why had this bird dying of west nile virus choosen to die on my patio? i have a curious one year old! that's when i remembered that emily had been playing on the patio all morning. what if she had already found this bird and was currently incubating the west nile virus in her tiny body? [you might better understand my panic when you learn that several months ago i innocently picked at a small scab on the back of emily's knee only to realize that it was a tick, not a scab, then in my panic i flicked it somewhere, which meant that when mike asked me to find it so that we could see if it was a lyme-disease carrying kind of tick, i couldn't find it. have you ever searched for a tick in your carpeting or garbage? needless to say, i didn't want to repeat that kind of act of sheer mommy negligence again.] dammit, i will not wonder if this bird has west nile virus; i will assume that he does. it's better to be safe than sorry!

hoping that i had spotted the bird before emily had, i closed and locked all of our patio doors. then i got on the phone to the san mateo county dying birds hotline. i was listening to the menu choices: welcome to the dead bird hotline... for instructions in engligh, press 1... as i was simultaneously listening to the menu and typing out a frantic instant message to mike about the possibility, no the fact that a bird dying of west nile virus was on our patio, the bird made a miraculous recovery, got up, and flew away. or at least he flew over our fence into the neighbor's yard to die there. crisis averted!

since i hadn't yet given the bird hotline my address or even spoken to anybody about the dying bird, i hung up the phone. and then i felt kind of dumb. and then i thought about what had just happened. was it possible that right before i saw the passed-out bird i had heard a loud thump? could the thump have been from the bird flying into the window above the screen door? i suppose it could have been possible that what had looked like a bird dying from west nile virus was really a bird in a stupor from his own failure to look where he was flying. hmmm. it may also be possible that before the west nile virus scare -- or before bringing a fragile beautiful child into my life whose welfare is my responsiblity -- i would have figured all of this out before jumping to conclusions. it's possible.

emily update: even though she's been quicker to walk than to talk, we learned this weekend while getting a splinter out of her foot that she's in command of at least one word: ow.

pregnancy update: last friday marked week 27. here's a picture that my friend julie took on that day:



weight gain update: