Stalking

I was thinking about staying in for the night -- it's been kind of a long day -- but then decided to dash out and take an evening walk to Trader Joe's for some supplies, both to take advantage of the balmy night air and full moon, and to get some spray cleaner for the (utterly filthy) mirrors I just hung up (and you can see from the t-shirt posting below that my bathroom mirror is in dire need of cleaning as well). It's 10 blocks away, give or take, and en route I was thinking my thoughts when out of the corner of my eye I spotted a large bamboo stalk, leaves attached, left on the side of the road as trash. "Huh, bamboo," I thought, and continued walking. And thinking about the bamboo all during my shopping. Such that I made sure to take the same route back home (I was going to do all four legs of the rectangle instead of the same two back and forth) and stopped to see if I could break off the branches and facilitate its transport home. It looks like it was pretty recently cut, and is still quite green, so the branches wouldn't snap off, even when I twisted them around and around, which felt a little torturous somehow. But even with the branches on, the stalk was pretty light, being bamboo and all, and so I slung it over my shoulder and traipsed on home with it. There were a decent number of Russkis out for their evening constitutionals (an almost neighbor of mine said that before he figured it out, it had felt like Night of the Living Dead to him), and they all seemed delighted to respond to my "good evening"s. I think I might have looked a little bit funny. It was really easy to carry, though I had to duck in for passing cars all the time, and the hardest part was maneuvering it around the bend in the outdoor staircase and then backing it up along the second-floor walkway so it could get in the front door. It's in my living room now, or rather, it is my living room now, 16 full feet from top to bottom,
and has become a kitty playground to boot. They've been dashing about and munching leaves like little pandas for a full 20 minutes now -- I suspect I'll be falling asleep to the surprisingly noisy crunching of bamboo leaves in tiny cat mouths.
The whole plan is to cure the stalk, remove the branches, sand off the major bumps, and turn it into a curtain rod for my big front window. But even if that fails, it'll have been at least an evening's entertainment for several of my neighbors and the boychiki.