Things I regret

1) Family of ducks on Rundle Street in Kent Town, pover the hackney Road - where ducks try to travel so much and there are no fucking signs anywhere warning drivers. They took them all down and for so many days in season I run around stopping traffic like a dickhead, while people beep and yell, trying to get these ducklings across the road. I do it a lot but it doesn't mean I feel any better because I failed one little family and it seems they were the ones that needed saving the most.
I'm worried this year because I don't live there anymore, and in my area, there are heaps of duck warning signs and mostly people drive pretty slowly anyway, because there are road-abouts.
anyway, I'm rambling. this is the story:
Because these guys were trying to cross the road, got distracted by traffic, sent down behind old houses in kent Town, i followed them, trying to guide them to the road where I'd hold back the traffic, the but noise must have been to bad and they got stuck in someone's back yard. i wish i'd done more, and known how to get them out, how to get her to the river, how to know who to call, how to get them to safety and to stop people in their pointless drives to get this duck to the river where she could look after her ducklings. The were so vulnerable, and she was too - she could fly to safety but she wouldn't leave her ducklings. and I couldn't help them. I'm learning a lot now about animals and animals rescue but it won't make up for not being able t help them. I can only hope that there was someone else that day who could do something more than I could. A hell of a lot more. I sucked that day and I can't go down that road without thinking of those ducklings and their mother's panic. As my post office was right there - the reason I saw them in the first place - I thought of them every day for three years. It made me really really sad.
2) My dear friends borrowed this incredible beach house at Wallaroo - it was right by the beach - PON the beach. the water would rush up against the concrete walls covered in shells and rocks - huge albatross like seagulls stormed about like bouncers. I loved it. We slept in camp beds and held hands across the space. We ate toast and read books and my friend and I lay about in pools of water created by sand and the drift of ocean while her boyfriend practised karate in the sand nearby. then a fishing boat pulled up on the beach and they showed us what they'd caught - a cat fish.
The saddest animals I've ever seen. Huge wise, sad, eyes. I looked at him and he looked back - no judgement, just sadness for me, for us. How crappy we were.
I wish I'd offered the fisherman some money to put the fish back in the ocean. I wish I'd just offered him money - pretended we'd kill it, and then snuck around and let it go, but I was frozen in misery. I let him down. I was crap.
I'll never forget that animal's eyes, so sad for us, for me. Pity, as he went off to be dragged in an old sack and stared at and mocked and teased. Pity for us.
And we deserved it.
I kept a photo from a magazine (I have four crates of cutting from magazines and newspapers of animals and things I might write about one day) and when I find it l'll post it here and you'll see what I mean, maybe. I hope so.

When the dark cloud sweeps over, this is what I think about. This stuff. I have loads of regrets, but these are the ones that stick to my ribs. This and a thousand others.
It's terrible to be alive. It's a joy to be alive.
Listening to: The utterly glorious silence of a Thursday night not living next to a pub
Thinking about: What the next chapter in my book will do to Cassidy.
Watching: My dog trying to unravel my Machiavellian knot of clothes tied over a liver treat bar he loves - he's going crazy trying to get to it. Excellent crazy, he's such a great dog.
Wearing: Chewed shoes
Reading: Last weekend's Sunday Age