vignettes from the past few days:

-signing papers at the mortgage brokers' in a nearby town...99 in the shade and 99% humidity as usual outside- and it looks like we'll be moving from west park lane on the south side to south lark lane on the west side...but even across town is a major ordeal
-taking nailed boards to the county dump near another small town, in the lowlands off the road where the turtle jumped out at me the other day- the '68 ford is happy out here, as you can tell, when a farmer or a driver, surrounded by nothing but fields, sees a truck like mine it momentarily takes them to another era. passed a few dead trucks along the way.
-moving something for my stepdaughter, another truck crossed the yellow line coming right at me, gave us a start. the four-yr.-old almost jumped from his seat. he's more used to my overreaction than the stepdaughter is, though, maybe.
-got a coupon from sambucca joe's from dave the media marketer which hit the spot when that lowland was anglin' through the ford windows...
-got a postcard from the red sea, from peggy the lazy gardener, and i'm glad she remembers detasseling (I linked right to it) because now she's thousands of miles from it, back in scotland. ironically my students are now predominantly saudi, homesick for the red sea...
-cleaning out the shed, which was full of ants, was looking down, picking up a phd (post-hole digger) and a bunch a rake-handles and knocked a saw down on my wrist which made the blood flow & left me a little woozy...then tonight the lightning came through & had to pick some of the previously ant-riddled debris back out of the yard...the saw, landing on my wrist as it did, gave me a kind of warning maybe. don't kill yourself. it'll all come out in the wash.
-then at the trailer-park laundromat (dryer, lawn mower & car tires (not to mention margot's caravan, god rest its soul) have buckled under the stress) up the street, they keep having the new york times, which doesn't make much sense and is especially baffling in light of the fact that even now there are still lots left when i walk in at 10 pm on the weekend. wonders never cease. maybe they'll start dropping piles at my doorstep.
-am vigorously giving away stuff, after a lifetime of collecting, and have two new philosophies. one: i don't need both a picture and an overstuffed chair, reminding me of a given era. am giving away the chair. compress memories into small, manageable items. but don't lose them. music, writing, gone by the wayside temporarily, professional activity hanging by a thread...
-two trips coming up, one with the family to arkansas, one with my son to a new home in kansas. makes ya love the open road. makes you grateful the oncoming traffic gets back between its lines, just in time, so i can watch out for that desoto lowland turtle, eli's pirate flag, corey's dance, & a beautiful wife's 49th, one more time.
-and here's to a new life on the west coast for the doc & her beau- may the sun set softly, gently, skip like a stone on your horizon...they call it the northwest, but if you're thinking alaska- and everyone should be- it's not even halfway...in fact, it's always been my theory that 'ketchikan' as in ketchikan ferry is really just short for 'ketch this ferry if you kan, absolutely, chek out the pines & the jumpin' salmon, the whales & such that follow the ferries just to see what they stir up in their wake, and don't get me started on what 'sitka', 'juneau' and 'nome' are probably short for...
-thunder's arrived, which has put the dog in a tizzy, turned the night on its ear. summer here is a sauna, a wretched, ant-filled saw-on-the wrist type of affair, but i'm grateful for tales of summers elsewhere, blueberry country, the northern lights, the view back east from the flint ridge. it is what you make it, and a bit of rain'll settle the dust....
-was explaining to the four=yr.-old why flo is my favorite of the 'cars' (because she has fins- maybe you have to have a 4-yr-old in america to know what i'm talking about), when, lo & behold, a '48 something-or-other appeared, on a truck bed, in the motel parking lot...had been talking about bonnie & clyde in class, thinking about how a picture, an account, a look in the eye, can take you back to an era- explaining, to a class of mostly saudis, what 'rural texas' and 'depression' meant- to the best of my ability. but also in that motel parking lot- it's travelling season- a motor coach with custom-lettered 'welcome ya'll' on the doorway. notice (i did) that y'all is spelled wrong. and it turns out, life was full of links, before the web ever came along...