no pool these days, so i've been walking, usually down through the ornament valley, past houses still lit up for the holidays. fortunately it's warm out, mild enough so that, when my hands get cold, i can shove them deep in my pants pocket and it'll be enough. coming back out to the west side, orion is king of the patch of open sky over sunset park, off to the southwest, where there aren't many houses, no lights to disrupt the view of the stars.

so tonight i headed off southwest, toward the open country, or to be specific, out tower, over to chautauqua, out rowan road to the university farms and thunderstorm road, out by what they called the tree improvement lands, but we called the dog improvement lands. it's open country, lots of lakes and fields and an old civil-war graveyard, but these days there's a huge deer fence there and it's pretty clear they don't want strangers just tromping around. the fence is maybe ten feet high; i imagine even deer don't mess with it. there wasn't a car on the road, for even about an hour, though there were a few on chautauqua; there are really only a half dozen people who live on rowan and thunderstorm put together, and i didn't see any of them. so it didn't matter, just being on the road itself was like being way out in the country, isolated, quiet, just me and orion, and a few million other stars, twenty times what you'd see in town, even though there were low-lying clouds; it was wet down at ground level.

it cleared my mind a little; made it possible to write. a lot of stress these days, even though it's break; my picture storage has disappeared (see a couple of posts down, esp. the comments); we rearrange the house; the little boys, not in school, taking full advantage. it pressures me, basically, that with break almost over, i've done so precious little of what i'd wanted, and now it'll be another year. but what, exactly, did i want? to sleep in once or twice, that was high on my list. a little blogging, yes, check. let the boys clamber all over me once in a while, do a jigsaw puzzle, check. the wind comes roaring from the south, all those warm wet clouds, stormy stuff, making me unsteady on my feet as i walk, barely keeping my feet on the road. it blows the time right out from under my feet, i guess, it's 2009, the kids are about grown up, we print pictures that will make people say so. we'll print them, that is, if we can get the tenuous chain of camera-to-laptop-to-photo-software-to jumpdrive-to printer cycle...if so, look for some pictures, in the mail, or somewhere. if not, know that cyberspace may be a few images richer...sharpen! life must go on.