Aw, the Lake. Lake Merritt in the heart of Oakland is a man-made lake that connects with the estuary, which makes it quite unique in terms of the ecological setting.

Yesterday was just not my day, which tends to happen when you have such a euphoric day prior, the next one well, is often a downer. But this was a busy crazy downer, the kind where the mind can't keep track of everything that is happening and is on the verge of doing nothing...potential brain overload. But with the help of a life catcher, I managed to get through it all. Sometimes you just can't be the strong one all the time. Sometimes it's better to be the weak one, and get help from a strong one.

Well the Strong One freed me up to walk around the lake with a friend. It had been years since I walked around the lake. It's much better now that they have the fountains going on. It used to be more marsh than lake before then and not so attractive. The walk allowed us to catch up on some one-on-one girl time as well as release all this anxiety energy. The Lake is good for that kind of dumping ground. At different edges of the Lake is a different scene: the downtown skyline, the boathouse, the geese and all their cute new goslings, wooded slopes, the kid's playground with the mini maze to walk through, the bandstand, and the bird sanctuary.

We let ourselves get distracted by "look shiny" things, you know those small things that seem irrelevant and silly but are completely fascinating. We looked at the stork's bright yellow feet that bobbed in and out of the murky green edges, the gosslings with their fluffy yellow hair, a yellow banana overripe on a car dash, and a uniquely colored dog (no, he wasn't yellow). When the world seems to run so fast, sometimes it's good to get distracted by things, even for a moment, something to break the rhythm of the freeway your life is running on, something to remind you how life continues on whether or not you're on it.