February 26th, 2012

The 24th - 25th were simply amazing. I picked up Raincloud and her cousin, Lara, after school on Friday, and we then drove to Hazelnut's house. We had pizza and an awesome cake:


And Hazelnut opened presents from her family. I also gave her a little gift; a clay "pencil dragon" I had made.


Then, the four of us headed upstairs and I gave Hazelnut a second, more magickal, present.




I hadn't thought mom would let me buy Hazelnut tarot cards, but she ended up not caring, so I got The Wildwood Tarot from Barnes and Nobel. The illustrations seemed really Pagan and earthy, from what I could tell from the box, and Hazelnut had been hinting that she'd been wanting tarot cards for a while. I suppose I underestimated her in that aspect, she nearly exploded when she pulled off the wrapping paper. :D The four of us hung out all evening, reading everything from Rupert's Tales to various poems. The morning of the 25th, we woke up bright and early (6:00), and took the train to Brookfield Zoo, where we spent the day. Talk about trippy. We had been there hardly an hour when all of a sudden we heard this eerie howling. The wolves were more than out and about; the big alpha male was seated on a rock, calling away for a good 20 minutes, with the others gathered around, listening. They were beautiful creatures; shaggy and grey with pale faces and darker legs and tails. Later, we were searching for the penguins in their exhibit, when we realized that they were literally right in front of us, directly up against the side of the enclosure, and that we'd been looking over their heads the entire time. Indeed, all the animals seemed over-active, as though determined to put on a good display for Hazelnut's birthday. The sea-lions were practically doing flips for us, and an African Wild Dog walked directly up to us and touched the glass with his nose. On the other hand, the Grizzly Bears were most decidedly asleep, curled up in a giant mound of hay so that they looked like great lumps of brown fuzz. We also saw the peacocks; two or three males and at least as many females, being trailed by a horde of guinea fowl. A while back (was it last summer? The summer before?) a peahen adopted a bunch of guinea fowl chicks, so I think the ones we saw must have been the same ones, all grown up. As we were on our way out of the zoo, Hazelnut stopped by a gift shop and got replicas of two amazing instruments: an Andean Flute, and a miniature African drum. Not only will they be great for rituals, they're fantastic looking, and can also be employed for fun, or for meditation. We were passing out the zoo gates, when a most enterprising peacock decided zoo life bored him, and walked right out the gate himself. We were quite panicked at the thought of an escaped peacock, but were assured that the bird was allowed to roam as he pleased, and that he was perfectly all-right. "Escaped" peacock taken care of, we proceeded to return home. I didn't want to leave, but unfortunately, I had church this morning, so I couldn't spend another night with my friend.

Today, I haven't done much besides church and homework, but I just thought I'd mention: the Forget-Me-Nots I planted just started to germinate; I've got one itty-bitty plant! Good thoughts for him, please!