Over the past couple of days a cardinal has been slamming his head into the living room window. We've put up fake owls in the window and he still slams and slams and slams. Intercrainal hemorrhaging would have taken root by now, surely?

Or a broken window, whichever comes first.

Or a broken mind, to wit: I have been swearing at this cardinal because my mother, in the months before her death, had – at least as far as the items I've found and mail order items delivered – become obsessed with cardinals.

The day she died, I opened one of the delivered and unopened packages and found it filled with little chotchke woodblocks relaying messages of something or other about a cardinal being an angel or memory or IDK whatthefuckever, and, given the timing – and in spite of being the indifferent agnostic with atheistic tendencies that I am, I (my stance: if I'm wrong, I'm wrong – and I'm relatively convinced that holy water would melt me like Christopher Lee circa 1965)– suitably, I think, and sans too fine a point, freaked the fuck out.

We've now entered day three of the intercranially-hemorrhaging headslamming cardinal and I am swearing at him still, jesusfuckingchrist go away, youre not getting in, youre not making me feel guilty anymore for being me im free now – or I will be once I get all of your fucking Christmas decorations out of your garage / QVC does NOT constitute generational family heirlooms…