came back from new mexico, last wednesday, actually this would have been about nine days ago now, and found spring popping, a grandchild born, off in washington state, and a semester totally burying me, for its last days; this went until about today. in my free time i grabbed pictures of the granddaughter, media star, and put them on facebook, thus making her plight worse. she was born a media star, gorgeous and in the limelight. i however plodded away at my grading and worried about my parents in new mexico who finally have a couch they can relax on. new mexico was gorgeous, high mountain air, cactus blooming, spanish architecture, and new cars everywhere; and, my parents had lots to read and i slept at night, well, with windows open. here i run around frantically again, containing children, getting ready for a tesol convention in boston, and trying to finish the 30-year-quilt, not to mention some other projects on the general shelf. and spring is busting out; it's quite beautiful. time to dig a garden, but there is no time.

hummingbirds hovered at my parents' feeder; we looked through old papers related to genealogy and found some historical documents that my great grandfather had collected as founder or curator of a historical society in council bluffs, iowa. one said that iowa meant 'sleepy ones' - i wanted to copy this but am still basically carrying it around. my father claimed that old dusty documents upset his allergies, so it was agreed that i would take the non-genealogy ones and in fact they were quite willing to let go of other things including a biography of john muir and another one of bill monroe. at night i'd walk way out into the desert, until roads turned into grainy sand and i could feel desert creatures peeping at me from under the cactus flowers. i got them on skype and the whole family got on there, waiting for the overdue grandchild, who was eleven days fashionably late and had a media entourage the moment she arrived. i was driving my parents around in their own car, when, one moment, i came up on a rise as an exit was about to split off in two directions. but the rise offered a stunning view of a wide basin, with huge mountains off on the horizon, and for just a split second i imagined coming up there on a horse, and seeing, suddenly, everything, for miles. i got distracted, and took the wrong exit. but that was the least of my problems. they had beautiful weather, and there was cool stuff to see, everywhere one looked.

i engaged the shuttle drivers in conversation even though i occasionally fail to tip them; i always forget, being distracted or too busy, to even put a few bills in my pocket. one said that juarez was the most dangerous city in the americas; they couldn't find anyone to be the police chief, so they had to send in the national army. i thought about airport haiku, but didn't write any, because the deadening stillness of such things as a security line were such a welcome relief, at first, that all i could do was enjoy them. airport haiku doesn't ever deal with the outdoors, or nature, but rather has four seasons: ticketing, security, gate, and baggage claim; these are like seasons in that each has a feeling to it and time marches on with deadening regularity, and extremely methodical regularity.

at home i'm way behind on the blogging; a son is home from kansas, has wisdom teeth out now, and is enjoying, with me, the traditional ncaa brackets, with kansas of course ranked as winning. you have to rank your own favorite as going one step farther than they're legitimately able to go, but you are free to both define your favorite, or how many, in my case, and, to determine for yourself how far you think they can legitimately be expected to make it. in kansas' case, they are expected to win it all anyway, by more than one person; but, murray state, uni and ohio have already posted upsets, and some more of my teams (nmsu, for example, which is in las cruces, or kansas state) may yet go a ways, we'll see. it's like a tour through the nation's universities, with some (wofford?) i've never heard of. did these guys get a basketball team before they got a pr director? or maybe the team is their pr strategy!

so, with the quilt, and kinsey's book, and the tesol presentation, and the garden, and the bicycles, i'd like to be a little more on top of it, but it hasn't happened. now's the weekend. and boston's coming. so, maybe i can at least think about some of this stuff. that, after all, is what airport security is for. that, and retirement. gives ya a chance to catch up on yer reading.