Dear guy in the white Ford ahead of me at the Del Taco drive thru,

Dear guy in the white Ford ahead of me at the Del Taco drive thru,

I've lately been having a talk with myself about anger. About rage, really. About grief and rage, which are twins, obverse and reverse of the same coin, aren't they? I could say that my grief/rage is national, but really, it's international and national and local and personal. Things are messed up. They are awry, askew, they are going sour and turning violent, and the losses--psychic, human, animal, civic--are at this point past counting.

Yes, I thought about all these things as I watched your broad backside, white Ford ahead of me in the Del Taco drive thru, brake lights aflare, as the driver--that's you, guy in the white Ford--leaned on an elbow out the window, apparently having a tete a tete with the person whose voice I could faintly hear through my own window, as I waited to order my two fish tacos and a Diet Coke.

Of course I was in a time crunch. Don't be ridiculous, of course I was.

What could you have been discussing? On NPR, they were discussing whether the Las Vegas shooter was somehow affiliated with the Islamic State, which the Islamic State claimed he was. Could he have acted on his own, and Islamic State still somehow claim it, in some legitimate sense? What is a legitimate claim from Islamic State, vis a vis this particular crime? &c &c &c, and the brake lights were still lit up and you, guy in the white Ford, still leaned out your window, and you were still, apparently, talking about something taco or burrito related? What could this be?

I admit I felt a tiny ignition of anger. I was under a time crunch, you see, a meeting that was to begin in fifteen minutes, and those fish tacos weren't going to eat themselves.

Finally, finally, you inched ahead in tiny, infinitesimal inches. And, following you, I crept forward to the drive thru kiosk to say, Two fish tacos and a diet Coke, and Del Scorcho. Because they always want to know if you want sauce, and Del Scorcho is what my son once ordered, ergo: Del Scorcho is my sauce.

I raced into my building, sack of tacos in one hand and the Diet Coke in the other. I managed one bite of one taco before I dashed to my meeting.

And now, having wolfed my tacos like a wolf, I'm thinking to myself: what could you have been discussing at the drive thru ordering kiosk, facing that tinny little speaker as if it were the person speaking through it? Was yours a terribly complicated order? Did you find yourself in need of a rundown of all the possible sauces? Were you ordering for a starving militia? Who are you, guy in the white Ford ahead of me in the Del Taco drive thru? And what hunger brought you to this drive thru, where you tarried, and, let's face it, kind of messed with my crack timing?

But that's okay, because I don't have a rage/grief problem, so we're cool,

htms

here you are, summer-into-fall cold! I've been expecting you!

Dear summer-into-fall cold,

Yep, here you are, sidling into my sinuses with all the subtlety of a ten-wheeler, reminding me that I haven't been sleeping enough, that my stress levels have been absurd, that I haven't yet figured out how to quiet my own mind, and all the rest. Thanks, summer-into-fall cold: I forgot about all of that, because not sleeping enough, electric stress, and an unquiet mind are not bad enough by themselves.

In case you missed it, here's a blow-by-blow (yes, pun intended, obviously) of my experiences since you arrived:

1. Salutatory sneezing in class
2. Hallucinatory participation in department meeting
3. Second level hallucinations in the hall, where I think there's a halo hovering over my head that turns out to be a curved ceiling molding at the periphery of my sightline
4. Extended quality time with Twitter, which I constantly refresh to keep up with what's happing with Donald Trump's horror show
5. Arising at 6 a.m. to obtain cold medicines from the store, along with a doughnut, because: Saturday
6. Extracurricular sleep
7. Cold medicine dose watch

....and more Twitter. (In case anyone wants to know what Twitter is good for, it's good for things like this.)

Summer-into-fall cold, I am giving you today. All of today, probably, a day when I hoped I would eat an enchilada and see a movie and maybe go shopping and maybe, maybe even grade a little bit. Instead, I am cozied up with the Vicks and the Mucinex and the dog, in bed. I hope you see the injustice.

Summer-into-fall cold, you and Donald Trump can burn in hell.

Sincerely,

htms

Dear first day of grading,

I am pleased to say that the progress was good today. This means that I

• set up the rubrics, and
• graded one third, more or less,

of the available stuff to grade. I am therefore, and thusly, on my way to being finished grading by tomorrow evening. A consummation devoutly to be wished, don't you agree, first day of grading?

Other things I accomplished:

• two workouts
• submitted my travel paperwork huzzah
• attended a meeting
• considered my place in the universe, and found myself wanting
• figured out what I'm wearing to a fancy event tomorrow night

So, you know, good day. Oh! also, I watched

• Purple Rain for the very first time in my life.
• !!!!!!!!!!!
• I KNOW.

One of my friends went to far as to say that this made me 'kind of a fraud.' At which I take umbrage, first day of grading. That was a long, long time ago. Who knows what was even happening? I had small children and responsibilities and there may have been other movies to see. Also, I finished my master's degree that summer! so, you know, I was writing a thesis. Fraudulent my eye. 

But I will say that when Prince plays that fantastic three-fer--'Purple Rain,' 'I Would Die 4 U,' and 'Baby I'm a Star'--to end the movie, it's clear--he is and was and forever will be a star. So it was high time, first day of grading, that I see it, and having seen it, it is and was and forever will be all I could ever have hoped for.

I'm not your lover, first day of grading, and I'm not your friend: actually, I am something that you'll never comprehend. So you better wrap your mind around that,

htms

Dear confluence,

Today was the first day of school.

Today was the day all the people in my world were mourning David Bowie.

Today was the day the radiologist reported that an MRI the historian had last week showed nothing to be alarmed about.

Today was my son Isaac's birthday.

Today my youngest son got in his new car, towing a U-Haul trailer with his earthly goods, and started to drive across America.

At certain points today, confluence, I wasn't sure which thing I was crying about.

I got up and made us all breakfast, and my son and his friend sat down with me and the historian to eat this meal. I could feel him stretching his muscles and his readiness. It's a good thing, which of course doesn't mean I have to like it.

I answered student email. I found some readings. I worked on a syllabus--the one for the class I don't teach till Friday. I made my schedules.

I went out, faxed something for my son. I mailed a package to my daughter. I mailed copies of my book to (almost) the last people on my list. I bought a pineapple and a loaf of bread and some fontina and some butter. I worked out.

At some point, I lay down and slept. I slept and I just wanted to keep sleeping.

Happiness, sadness, the work needing to be done.

We had the last of our squash soup and melted cheese on bread for dinner. I cleaned up the kitchen. I ironed six white shirts.

The sky is clear and cold. My son is in Kearney, Nebraska, about a third of the way there.

Happy birthday, Isaac. I will miss you, David Bowie.

Confluence, you are the secret manager of the order of all rivers, and therefore, of flow.

Keep moving,

htms

2015: a retrospective.

Dear 2015,

I told myself, and perhaps others, that I would blog every day in the year 2015. I did pretty well--323 posts. It's not quite the high watermark that 2012 was, when I wrote 363 posts. But still.

There were times this year when things felt so sad and hard--not necessarily my own personal things, but things in the larger world. Deaths. Suffering on an intimate and global scale. I wanted to speak to these things, but sometimes the daily post seemed an inadequate container for that speech. So: silence.

I'm sorry for those silences, ultimately.

In a year of so much sorrow, there were also so many miracles, so many joys. Two weddings among my children. A new granddaughter. Visits hither and yon. My best friend and I walked down to the Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde. I swam in the North Sea and climbed a Scottish mountain(/hill). Went to Ireland and saw passage tombs and swans in a river and won a poetry prize. I  held my new book in my hands.

It feels incomprehensible to me sometimes, truly, the ways that sorrow and joy braid and intertwine, but I want to be able to speak to that, that twisted fiber that makes the thread that becomes the fabric that is experience. I want to try to find words for all of it. That's why I want to write, to be a writer: to keep trying to find those words.

This next year, I plan to

• write more
• take excellent care of those I love--the historian especially, and my parents
• cook more

We were talking, my family and I, about resolutions the other night. My daughter said she liked to make a resolution, one that was positive, that had to do with how she treated others with greater care. I loved that. I always think of resolutions in terms of what I want more of--more creativity, more joy. Maybe more dancing. That would be an excellent resolution.

Thank you, my dear readers, for reading and talking back to me. I treasure the conversation.

love,

htms

Dear my hands,

'Like most people, I have spent the better part of my life oblivious to the workings of my own hands.'

That's what Frank Wilson says, in the Prologue to his book The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture. My hands, I am not sure that I would quite say that. I remember so clearly how I focused so painstakingly on my hands when I practiced the piano. How deliberately I would relax my wrists, let my fingers float infinitesimally above the keys. How I would lift and drop them heavily into my lap, then place them again at the keyboard, wrists relaxed, fingers afloat.

I remember the pleasure I took in learning to knead bread.

Stroking a child's soft hair.

I'm thinking about the hands--the body, really--today because I spent a couple of hours making a blank book. Folding the signatures of paper, burnishing the fold with the bone folder. Pressuring the awl through the paper at the fold, then through leather. Threading a needle with waxed fiber. Pushing the needle through paper and leather repeatedly, sewing four signatures into a leather binding.

The room full of other people, doing the same.

Taking the time to undo a mistake.

After threading the needle, pinching away the excess wax that gathered on one side of the eye.

Lining up the marks so that the long stitches of the binding would be even, more or less.

Sewing on a button for a closure.

A sigh, signal of a small exasperation. Gathered in the lungs, and expelled.

Wilson notes, of a medical work by Sir Charles Bell, Scottish surgeon,

'It is genuinely startling to read Bell's Hand now, because its singular message--that no serious account of human life can ignore the central importance of the human hand--remains as trenchant as when it was first published. This message deserves vigorous renewal as an admonition to cognitive science. Indeed, I would go further: I would argue that any theory of human intelligence which ignores the interdependence of hand and brain function, the historic origins of that relationship, or the impact of that history on developmental dynamics in modern humans, is grossly misleading and sterile.'

Today, I felt the the steel of the needle in my fingers, both the pressure of pushing it through paper and leather, and the pressure of pulling it through to the other side. I felt the materials in my hand. Today, I was glad for the work of hands.

love, htms

Look what I made with my own hands at the #slccpubcenter: a leather bound long stitch bound journal with a button closure.

A photo posted by Lisa Bickmore (@megastore) on Nov 13, 2015 at 2:20pm PST

(for Mary & for Charlotte)

Dear defunct appliance,

Yesterday, when I was eating an omelet with my son (who was eating a breakfast burrito), he reminded me that we needed to get a new oven already.

'Don't you miss baking?' he asked.

Well, of course I do. I really really do, and also I miss turning my head to you, defunct appliance, and seeing your reassuring squared-off numerals that tell the time. These days, I still turn my head--it's been a month and I can't unlearn the habit--but all I see is a big blank. Right. I ripped out your wires because you were beeping like a maniac. You could have waited until after New Years for your long-prophesied total meltdown, defunct appliance. But you didn't. No, like a brat, you self-destructed in the middle of the semester. The MIDDLE. That's a bridge too far, defunct appliance.

But I miss you all the same, which is why we went, finally, to Lowe's tonight, armed with foreknowledge about what double wall ovens cost (a lot), and what we wanted (27", convection, stainless steel), to see about replacing you.

The guy who helped us (thanks, Michael!) was extra nice, and we are on the path. Of course you can't just go buy a double wall oven today, even if you're prepared to spend the benjamins right then and there.

'We have to order any wall oven in,' our guy told us, firmly. 'We don't keep any of those in stock.'

WHY AMERICA.

Fine.  'But before we order it, we send a guy out to measure, just to make sure it will fit,' he said, by way of information.

I feel like this oven will
basically sing to me whilst
I am baking.

Defunct appliance, even in your wire-ripped coma, you are a pain in the ass. Which I have already measured, but who am I? Just some lunatic with a tape measure, I guess.

Tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. sharp, our guy's best installer's factotum will show up with a tape measure. He will be a professional tape measurer. I will present him with the print out of our hoped-for double wall oven (27", convection, stainless steel)'s dimensions. And hopefully it will be a go, and we will go back tomorrow evening to our guy and place the order.

And then it will only be two weeks (i.e., just after Thanksgiving) before we have an oven in working
order.

In honor of your future funeral, defunct appliance, here are the top ten things I will bake, roast, and broil in your successor:

• whole wheat bread
• muffins
• scones
• baked potato
• roasted broccoli
• baked penne and cheese
• cornbread
• oatmeal cookies
• possible cupcakes
• and a belated pumpkin pie.

Too bad you won't be around to see it,

htms

Dear darker,

'So, it's lighter when we first get up, right?' I asked the historian. I can never remember. Fall back, as a metaphor, contains no clue as to light.

'Yes, and darker earlier,' he said. Clarifying the situation.

And yes, when we got up with an uncounted hour under our belts, it was lighter. I made waffles. The paper was late, probably because all that clock-wrangling had a discombobulating effect.

I put away all my cotton skirts. My airy shirts. The last of the sandals. Hung up the dark dresses, folded the wool cardigans into the chest.

The afternoon wore into a certain sighing and tumult of wind. The clouds and sun in a little contretemps of lessening light and thickening chiaroscuro. Around five, you could feel it, that falling.

Darker, I can already feel you, like a subtle infection. Like a coat too heavy for the actual weather. It's November, so I should be, but I'm not--I'm not ready.

But we're in for it, darker, ready or not, for colder and shorter and sharper. For coming out to the edge of the cave, taking a look, turning right back around. Settling into you, darker, coming right up to the edges and not being able to see past you, heavy veil, with a piercing of stars, planes waiting to trace their landing paths with light.

Just those, and a line of street lamps, arcing away. I'll pocket them: they'll be small candles to light for the duration.

It's bedtime, I guess. But, darker: it's seemed that way since five.

hams

Dear pointless western,

As I staggered out of my study after two hours of online student appointments, at night, I heard you, pointless western, drifting in from the other room in the estimable voice of Jimmy Stewart.

Oh, I know. How pointless could you be? Because Jimmy Stewart, who is the ne plus ultra of old time movie stars. I love him, which is why I kept on staggering into the room, and fell onto the bed,

movie star!

and leaned up against the historian, and watched, sort of.

'Is that Henry Fonda?' I asked, about some other ancillary character who had what seemed like a Fonda-esque voice, at least at first

'No, that's Arthur Kennedy,' said the historian, who had been watching for awhile before the Great Weariness emerged from my study. Of course. Henry Fonda's voice would have been reedier.

Pointless western, we watch a lot of movies in your neighborhood, because there are channels that specialize in old movies, and in old movie days, there were a lot of westerns. Plenty of them were pointless because most of the time, most movies are pointless. Most of the time, you're a kind of old time-y noise. A relic, except for the aesthetic, sometimes, and the movie stars.

To be honest, pointless western, I couldn't even recount what the story actually was, or what happened in and among the flirting with the storekeeper and the plot about who sold rifles to the Apaches, except at the end, I know there was a showdown and someone paid the price for some perfidy. There was some shouting to that effect. Lots of conniving and some high-minded speeches, and an old man who dreamed terrible dreams. All of it in black and white. Big skies. Horses.

There might have been something else on to watch, but I was too busy laying there and then doing one tiny bit more of work to find the remote.

In the end, justice, of a sort, and the hero rides away. Back to Laramie. I envied him that, pointless western--maybe not the Laramie part, but the riding away, and the sunset, even in black and white.

htms

Open letter to my Canvas course.

Dear my Canvas course,

I have published you. Let's be clear about that. So you're on the books. You're legit. You're actually happening. Regardless of how I feel about the first day, orientations, projected schedules, updating due dates, and all that these imply.

Metaphor: it's like being at the top of a precipice, with a sled in tow. A rickety, haven't-used-it-in-a-while sled. Needs a little WD-40 sled. And I'm looking at my sled, then looking at the slope--whence I will very soon be sledding down--and I think, what the hell. And then I get on and shove off.

Wheeeeeeeeee! And whatnot.

Am I still jet lagged? Why do you ask?

I'm pretty sure we're going to have fun, my Canvas course, but right now, I am holding on for dear life and starting the hurtle down the mountain, and I still really really need some more sleep.

Just keep it together, will you? I'm not sure if I'm talking to myself or to you, my Canvas course, and right now I'm not sure if I can tell the difference.

filled with undecidability,

htms

Letter to the end of summer.

Dear end of summer,

I know you're not here yet, not quite. Today, there was a family celebration held under a spreading catalpa tree, with blankets on the grass and food under the patio shelter and everyone lingering despite the fact that it was noon, and then past noon. There was an afternoon catnap at five. There was an ice cream social in our friends' back yard, with children's ice cream cones melting in their hands and everyone chatting as the sun went down, the trees marking our horizon glittering with the falling light, the air cooling, the party lights coming on. Summer. We're still in it.

I suppose, though, that the relevant fact of August means that we must look out for you, as inexorable as the weeks passing, the now noticeable every day minutes-earlier sunset, the way that even the warmest afternoons now predict that they are numbered. That soon enough, we'll be remembering them, coming home from work at dusk, snugging up inside as the evenings get cold.

A friend noted, recently, that summer had gone by too quickly, which she could tell by the fact that they hadn't even finished one jar of mayonnaise. I replied It's not over yet! And I meant it, and mean it now. It's not over, but over it will be, and soon enough. And the fact of its immanent end adds sweetness to every last moment: to the ceiling fan ticking over our sleep. To the flowers that have sturdied and kept blooming in the yard even under the sternest sun. To our evening walks with the dog. To our plans, and how they seem so much more finite now. To the harvest which has not yet reached its peak, though soon enough it will.

End of summer, I hope you will keep your coming steady. I hope you will not rush. Be gentle, end of summer. I want to mark, record, enjoy every moment still left.

htms

Dear my summer lassitude,

I have a few questions for you.

1. Why do I feel so tired at the beginning of the day, and also at 3:30 in the afternoon?
2. Where has all the watermelon gone?
3. Is it wrong that I basically only want to drink sparkling water? Along with limeade? And maybe sparkling water spiked with limeade?
4. And eat potato chips like they are LITERALLY going out of style?

And also,

5. Why does the poem I have been working on steadily through the summer now seem sort of pointless?
6. And why does this sort-of pointlessness now seem to infect any possible new poems I might briefly consider writing?

And:

7. having worked my way through a whole book series I have already read and reread countless times, as well as a television series that I have viewed and re-viewed countless &c &c, what else is there to do?
8. besides read the Louisiana-based crime novels I am currently reading, I mean?
9. and maybe amuse myself by fake-planning a trip to Morocco?

My summer lassitude, maybe I should just give in to you, and read (or re-read) something trashy out on the porch while drinking sparkling water, ordering travel guides to Marrakech, and then taking a nap.

But not yet. Because, even though a nap was beckoning me hardcore this afternoon, I hoisted myself and my almost-but-not-quite lax form into my sneakers and went to the gym. And then, I came home and made a new recipe for dinner. This dish wasn't everything I hoped it would be, my summer lassitude--it wasn't watermelon, in other words--but it was the little show of personal grit and will that I need to look again at my poem and manuscript, and possibly discover--or manufacture--a point.

We'll see, I guess, but just in case, maybe I better lay in some more limeade, a case of sparkling water, and a big fat watermelon. Nuts for the winter, you know.

htms

Dear Monday masquerading as Tuesday,

I know, I know--you also signal that the week will be short. That's your CV, your street cred, your bonafides. 

Still: why, Monday masquerading as Tuesday, why so crushed-up and cataclysmic, so last-minute-to-prepare? So it's-all-happening? Monday masquerading as Tuesday, why so hardcore?

Let me just say, I had a long list of stuff I was going to accomplish after getting home just shy of six, and finding that I had nothing to make for dinner, and rushing off to see a grandson's basketball game. Which was so fun! And then eating a dinner we grabbed on the way home. And then Justified. All so fun! And then, whoops, it was ten o'clock and the list was unattended to. The list: derelict and unkempt. It is, in a word, a list untouched. And now, it's time to walk the dog.

Monday masquerading as Tuesday: now is the time for a big s i g h.

Yeah, I know. This is just a performative whine. So I'll leave it, but Monday (masquerading as a Tuesday), I kind of hate how you can make a perfectly beautiful dream of a getaway just pfff! evaporate like, you know, a perfectly beautiful dream.

Monday masquerading as a Tuesday: no one likes a dream-evaporator. No one.

srsly,

htms

Dear breakfast,

How often you redeem a day! --if an event that occurs at the beginning of a day can be said to redeem that day? This is a philosophical conundrum that can best be resolved by watching a two year old dismantle a very large pancake in the shape of a kitten, with a face made of kiwi and strawberries and grapes. (A breakfast burrito also does not go amiss.) Meanwhile, the little two year old asks her mother: do you like...diet Coke? do you like...drinks? do you like....pancakes? do you like...Grandma?

See, breakfast? That's what you are so good at. Redeeming days before they even happen. Before they get too long, before they end with long meetings concluding in dark rooms. Literally, breakfast: dark rooms! Why didn't we just turn on a light, already.

Well, although we will never know the answer to that philosophical conundrum, I'll always have you, breakfast, redeeming days before they have even started.

You are literally the best,

htms.

Open letter to the countdown.

Dear countdown,

For weeks, I have been avoiding you. I'm sure you're aware of this fact, because you've been hiding around every corner.

There, by the Christmas tree, in its last stages of drying, the lowest ornaments drooping almost to the ground. You're there among the branches. And in the refrigerator--you're the atmosphere of leftover things that need to be cleaned out, and in the kitchen too--all those baked goods that are past their giftable dates, not to mention the closets I wanted to tidy, to get rid of things that no longer have a spark of joy in them.

You don't say anything, but you don't have to: I look at the tree, the refrigerator, the counter, the closet, and note to myself,  that's another thing I need to do before I... and I try to stop myself, because I'm not ready to name it, not yet, not ready to count the days forward until...

Fine, I'll say it: until the new semester. It starts in nine days. Nine days. And there we are: just by giving it a number, I've initiated it, the countdown, with your every second ticking like a bastard, adding the frisson of panic and the pulsing soundtrack of shit to do.

It's more than a week, which is really a lot, as in: a lot of days. But the tolling of the countdown means more lists and items, more ways to regiment each day, each hour, each half hour.

Well, countdown, it's been a really nice break. I hope you'll agree to be a useful companion and not a bully. I know what I have to accomplish. I've got a list.

Seriously, that self-righteous, meaningful glancing at your wristwatch? Knock it off,

htms

Dear post-semester mood,

You are flighty, aren't you? For days, you're gray and rainy, chilly, austere. And yet your light--the light lasting longer is a temperature of its own, tending toward gusty but sunny, or scattered sunny, or tiny hits of sunny in an ambiance of mercurial.

The tulips have spent their glory, all but a handful--a dark purple Queen of the Night, a streaky pale yellow and red. The flax and the centaurea are bluing up the joint. And columbine are making their first spiky statements. These are your flowers, are they not, Post-semester mood? I believe that, at one time or another, you planted them.

Post-semester mood, your obsessive checking for student retorts online has just about ended. But your letter of recommendation writing is still turned up to a million. That's on the "Things I Said I Would Do" meter. Which is still hitting the red zone regularly. The needle is twitchy.

Still, though I am in the throes of you, Post-semester mood, I am nonetheless hanging out in a quiet place. I am in a straightened and tidied room, whichever room I'm in. I'm wearing lighter colors and I'm holding a finger to the winds to see if it's time to have breakfast on the patio.

Post-semester mood, you are transient, changeable. You're a sudden directional shift. You're accommodating and, it must be said, a little languorous. You're my capricious--a bit--companion, and yet you're my steadfast. I wake up, there you are. I tire of a task, you're ready for a little reading, a small irresponsible excursion, a nap. I do the dishes and you are there, making it feel like a tiny stolen joy.

Post-semester mood, I hope you stick around. You're my unreliable, constant consort, perfect for this green, warming, restless, liminal state of being. Provisional, that's what you are, and I need you for now, until the new jurisdictional mood settles in, God only knows when.

fitfully yours,

htms

Even tinier letters.

Dear student consultations that lasted the whole of last week,

Man, you really took it out of me.

still tired,

htms

*

Dear The Blacklist,

Even though as late as last week, I was still watching you, despite the fact that I really could see pretty much all of your flaws, when I read that Emily Nussbaum called you "torture porn," I now do kind of have to quit you.

sorry, but she's right,

htms

**

Dear all the committees,

I am tired of your shenanigans.

now, which one of you shall I quit?

htms

***

Dear fallen leaves,

When I saw you all over the back lawn, it was like the atmosphere was yellow.

you're really beautiful,

htms

****

Dear harbinger of the storm,

I walked straight toward you, from meeting to meeting, and I closed my eyes and breathed you in.

I've been waiting for you,

htms

The Way to Grace.

Dear The Way to Grace,

Tonight, I saw you in Pocatello, Idaho, just past the parking lot of an Applebee's. It seems to me that I have crossed you before, although I never before saw the sign. Your sudden appearance raises a few questions for me.

Are you, The Way to Grace, only a Pocatello thing? Or are you in other Idaho towns? Is Applebee's on The Way to Grace? Or was that just coincidental?

Perhaps it was that enormous wedge salad I ate, or the small headache I had from driving? Although I don't think it was an hallucination.

Was it the hour, after dark? the season, late? the particular crossroads?

Will you appear to me again when I least expect it? I know I will think of you. If I want to find you, where shall I look?

sincerely,

htms

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Dear Sunday,

Despite my intentions, I woke up early today. The dog was at the door. That sounds like a metaphor, but it's not: Bruiser sleeps elsewhere, i.e., not with us, because he's a big guy and likes to sleep sideways.

But at some point in the early hours, he always comes to the bedroom door and requests entrance. We should just say No, Bruiser, because if we do, he'll retreat for awhile, and we can sleep a little longer. But usually one of us lets him in. That person tries to make it back to the bed, flipping the covers back over with great haste, so that the B settles between us but does not upset the overall sleep ecology. But I think you can see: it's an iffy proposition. It's always possible that he'll beat you to the bed and you'll be making do with the short shrift this arrangement offers, covers-wise.

So I got up, went out to get the papers. Came in, made breakfast. Began to read the news, bad and good news in whatever today's proportions seemed to be. Seems like a lot of bad news lately, doesn't it, Sunday? But Sunday is the only day that I can linger over a newspaper, so I always do.

I caught up with the bit of sleep I might have added to the night's later this afternoon. I lay down with my current novel, read a few chapters and sank into some dream set in the same strange country as the novel. Woke up, relieved that I hadn't slept as long as my epic dream seemed to indicate. The light slanted in the window at an approximate afternoon hour. I got up.

That's how it's been today, Sunday. Desultory and not particularly productive. Sleepy. Rainy. After a decidedly action-packed Saturday, I was pretty glad that you and I came to this agreement.

still resting,

htms

Dear afternoon nap,

I remember earlier today, when I was thinking about how the day--a Saturday--might unfold. Definitely the farmer's market. And I thought I might go in to my office to finish packing stuff for the move to the new shiny office. After that--what? It could have been anything. An open afternoon with space in it for a walk, or writing, or baking, or pesto making, or all of that and more. Anything at all! it's the kind of day that gleams as the paradigm for Saturday, the kind of day that paradoxically happens only seldom.

So yes, the farmer's market, with a splendid haul. We unloaded and put food away, and in short order I had taken myself to Target for a roll of packing tape, then off to my office, where I found that my prox card wouldn't let me in. Evidently since my prox card is now programmed to let me into my new building, where I am not yet moved in, I am no longer allowed in after hours to my current building, where my stuff still is.

And yet, the day still glowed. The sky clear, the sun shining. Oh well, I thought. I'll just come in early on Monday. (Parenthetically, let me say that the I'll just come in/get up early on X gambit is almost always a ruse. That I perpetrate on myself, but never mind.) So I took my roll of tape and went home, made myself some lunch, then lay down to read. Which lead to you, afternoon nap.

Three hours later, when I roused myself, I was all, now what just happened here? But in point of fact,
it was probably a good thing. I've been sick, after all. And I've been traveling hither and yon. Maybe it's a little extra payment on the principle of my staying healthy mortgage.

The fact remains, though, afternoon nap, that you kind of snuck up on me. And that makes me feel a little sheepish.

hope I'm not up all night,

htms.