Last night, for some stupid reason, just as I was heading up to bed, I stopped at the island in the kitchen and started reading my mail.

The first envelope was from a collection agency in LA who wanted $916 that we supposedly didn't pay to the apartment complex we left last March.

Way to ruin a night.

I paid the bill they claimed I didn't. It was the amount I owed after subtracting our deposit from the penalty of breaking the lease. And I paid it and have the scans of the paid check to prove it.

So I had to drive out to Lancaster on Friday to be all,  "Oh, no you didn't" with the office there at our former place of residence.

I did that and they were irritatingly cute and nice and apologetic and set about correcting things immediately, which was infuriating because I wanted a fight.  

So, with that done, I went to McDonald's for a sausage McMuffin with egg sandwich, since I hadn't had breakfast yet. For whatever reason, they didn't have hash browns ready at 9:00am and I had to pull around and wait about 10 minutes. So as I'm parked in the lot, listening to David Sedaris' latest book on CD, I saw a hummingbird like flying around the shrubs. I was about seven miles from our house, so I know it wasn't Phred, but it looked just like Phred and I've grown such a deep affinity for these birds and their antics. 

Just as I'm thinking how cool it is that this bird looks like Phred, he flies right into the open door of the front of the McDonald's.

Now, this has been a fear of mine since we moved here; that one of the hummingbirds would accidentally fly into the house and we'd have to find a way to coax it out of the house without hurting one of the delicate wings. I imagine the task is nearly impossible. Kelly and I are obsessive about closing the screen door for this reason; I think the last thing in this world that I want to see is a beautiful hummingbird with only one functional wing try to fly.

Sorry for sharing that sad image, but it explains why, when I saw the bird fly into the inexplicably propped-open door to McDonald's, I bolted out of my still running truck to get this bird out of McDonald's. Fortunately, as I was running toward the door, the bird, who had flown in and turned a corner, came back out and flew away.

I had confused several onlookers by bolting out of a truck and running 20 feet, then stopping, smiling and walking back to the truck having chased what was surely to them an unseen phantom, then deciding the phantom was gone. 

It makes me wonder if one year ago, without my experience now with the desert and the house here and my new appreciation for life in a desolate place, if I would have even seen that bird. And if I had been an onlooker,what I would have thought of the fat guy lurching out of his truck toward the door.