This past month Paul’s been working a couple night shifts a week.  Having to switch back and forth between mornings and nights sucks for him.  A lot.  And having to come home and sleep during the day in our little unairconditioned dutch oven of a house is equally sucky.  And I don’t particularly like never seeing him.

But there is a small silver lining.  And that is that suddenly, in the evenings, I have been finding myself with little windows of quiet solitude.

I love my baby.  I love Paul.  And I almost always prefer company to flying solo.  But oh my god, how I savor that time between when I put HH down around 8 and put myself down around 10.  I can read a book!  I can write!  I can watch (another) episode of The Americans!  I can read my Mormon housewife blogs!  I can…drink a beer and watch the crows!

“Drinking beer and watching crows”, I hear you thinking, “is the absolute worst way to spend valuable minutes of alone time (aside from maybe the Mormon blogs).”  But let me tell you, friends, it has become my favorite.

I don’t remember hearing crows in SF or Kentucky.  Maybe it’s a southern California thing, because they wake me up every morning at my parent’s house too.  Either way, at sunset in our neighborhood, the crows really get going.

When dusk hits, they begin to line up on the trees and telephone lines all around our house.

They are everywhere.  Cawing and whatever.

Then, it will get eerily quiet…everything will be kind of still…the crows just sit…then…BOOM!  A caCAWphony (zing!) of crowing as they all take off, en masse, to flock somewhere else.

As they fly the crowing stops, replaced by the heavy, soothing shOOOsh shOOsh of hundreds of wings.

This happens a few times over the hour or so the sun is setting.

(Sidenote: We live in the same neighborhood as Culver Studios.  The bungalow where Alfred Hitchcock used to write is around the corner. I know The Birds took place in Bodega Bay and was based on a novel, so I don’t know really if there’s any relation.  I’m just saying…)

Anyway, for some reason I am totally captivated by this process.  It is creepy and calming and beautiful.

So when the baby goes down I head out to the porch with Spike and a beer…no book, no computer…to watch the crows line up, listen to them settle in and chit chat, contemplate the changing sky, and wait for the mass exodus.

THEN I go inside and watch the Americans.  Because however awesome the crow phenomenon may be, it doesn’t involve wigs.