Spring zoomed past me this year. May was a rough month, as I wrote about starting here, and then here, here, here, here,  here and here and so suddenly it’s June and I realized that flowers grew, bloomed, and disappeared without me noticing.

I missed the beginning of puppy season.

That’s when all the gangly, brand-new puppies start to learn that leashes aren’t for chewing, and not every moment can be taken at a gallop. All the trees are lushly leaved, and the grass looks like it never left.

So I decided today to go out and notice things.

I got my feet wet. About ten inches of water stood between me and the lakefront, but I plunged through anyway.

I found that the dandelions were already white and already almost used up, I listened to the different birds going different kinds of crazy, and even caught a few moments with my camera.

I felt a kinship with the birds. I made my way to the lakefront and decided to focus on the seagulls.

They were elusive.

But I watched them as they’d stop, almost as though hitting a wall, and wind down toward the water, pulling up at the last second to land gracefully on the surface. They flew the direction I was walking, and I started to wonder if they were trying to create the photo opportunity, if they felt the sense of connected nature I was feeling.

Until I felt a soft plop on my head under an utterly cloudless sky, a sky so blue there was no room for self-delusion.

Yes, that’s right.

Right on the head.

I guess the seagulls didn’t like me so much after all.

My Mom’s always told me that it’s good luck, but sometimes that sounds like the kind of thing you tell someone to make something unpleasant less so.

I choose to believe it, regardless.

So I cut my noticing trip short so that I could shampoo my hair enough times to lose count, but bird poop or no bird poop, at least for an hour, I actually saw the world.