my move is only about five blocks - a chess move, i call it, three blocks south, two east, and it's through a peaceful colorful neighborhood of lubbock, very nice. sometimes i have my tail-door open and my flashers on, and this is when i listen to bluegrass, only the best. steadily my back gets tired; i've been doing a lot of books. my wife's back gave out already. now, she's cleaning, i'm moving.

but we're in the second week, and it's getting a little tiring. also, things don't quite fit into the new house; it's not quite big enough. it's like our junk spread out to occupy every living inch of the old house, and we just have fewer inches, less house. that's why she cleans; i think she's better at throwing it out. half the time i look at it, don't know what it is, and just move it.

so it all came down to this doll house, that just wouldn't fit into the back of the van. we were out there on flint, which is a fairly busy street, and we were moving the doll house around hoping to wedge it in there, but it wouldn't wedge. it was just too big. had to take the roof off, right out there on the street. no problem though, i just got out my one remaining phillips-head, i got this on flint itself, i believe, and took off that roof. doll house made it. the remaining big things are: ping-pong table, glass patio table, futon frame. we'll see.

why am i telling you this? it's weighing on me. i've put off my poetry. i've stopped publishing stuff. i don't feel creative. i just make many cups of coffee, one at a time, and move move move. i like the silence of the new house. i've gotten one of my lazy-boy chairs back; i've reclaimed it, and with my coffee, i own this quiet little living room. back at the other house, i'm looking at stairs to fix, basement to redo, stuff to move. what a headache. my wife, however, has done a pretty good job with the upstairs.

lately i've started looking at these monster trucks that people drive around. i call them monster trucks because some of them are wide, some are extra-long and hold 4-6 people, etcetera. one guy told me he stopped bikeriding because the monster-truck drivers just couldn't see him. it wasn't an indictment of the people so much as just a statement of their size; these things dominate, they're everywhere, they're more common than cars, and they're big. anyway, one of the most popular brands is the avalanche. why would you want a truck with that name? i'm not sure. this is the flattest place on earth, the only hills are when they make one to make a ramp to cross one road over another. no hills at all, but you can drive an avalanche around town just in case. the newspaper, also, is called the avalanche-journal, as if it's an ongoing journal about what's coming down the mountain. well i'll tell you, the mountains are about five hours west, so if anything's coming down them, it's probably just that warm dry wind, not a whole bunch of snow. now silverado i could understand, that's a good old-west kind of name, has an image, you like the image, etc. we ourselves drive a sedona which is one of many named after these western mountain towns that have their own mountainy image. santa fe, tahoe, it's a whole genre. but avalanche? i don't get it. people like their truck named after their vaguest fears, maybe.

sons went off to see hobbit, girlies went off to play with a friend. a rare moment of peace, as it warms up a bit out here in south texas. it's quiet at the new house. slowly, boxes of clothes come over, and we put them away. sometimes even a pile of clothes hurts my back. that's when it's time to sit a spell. some of that junk'll just have to wait.

new house - a chess move away from the old one, three blocks south, two blocks east. slightly smaller, so we have to throw away some old junk that we've collected. i, for one, have trouble throwing away shoes, even though i walk them to death, but it's what, i paid maybe sixty bucks for them, so i just can't throw them away.

my wife buys one of these wastebaskets that you put your foot on it and it opens. but it's broken already. you put your foot on it once and it breaks. same with the battery-operated toothbrush. it was time for a new one. you unscrew it for two days and it's still not open, won't open. finally it opens. i wonder if there's anything a person can buy these days that isn't a worthless piece of crap. i already get my wife to do all the shopping because i can't bear buying the stuff, though i will if i have to. i hold my breath and just waste the money. but if it's plastic, i know where it'll end up.

unfortunately, now both houses are full of this stuff. plastic, broken, worth money, useful in an abstract kind of way, if it worked, yes, it would be a working garbage can, for example. but what do you do, throw it away and start over? the purpose of this kind of closing garbage can is to keep the dog out of it. dogs love greasy paper towels and whatever they can pull out of it, half-eaten hot dogs, etcetera, but dogs can break just about anything we can break, only generally worse, i wonder if they make this kind of stuff out of wood. somebody could make a killing, just coming up with functional things in life that weren't cheap plastic.

so this new house is on a quiet street, it's almost spooky. no constant traffic from nineteenth or flint or anywhere else, just an occasional dog-walker ambling down the street. the reason we did it was that the old house was a little too expensive, a little too prominent, a little too right up there on the main streets. we needed a place to function, a place to bring up kids, breathe, have a back yard, that kind of stuff. big improvement on all those fronts.

it's a quiet neighborhood, except for in the wide park where i usually walk; that one is totally full with students and dogs. i run the van the five or six blocks from the old house to the new one, and there's almost nobody else on the road. that's because it's football day, in this case it's the pros, maybe packers-seahawks, or colts-patriots or both. people don't care, they're into all of them, they're home watching. my wife gets a new bulletin on her phone: seahawks win. these bulletins used to be for big news, like 9-11. now they're for a football game, and it isn't even the super bowl. and, everyone in texas, just about, already knew who won. they all watch. that's why they aren't bombing around town causing trouble.

we have a new venue, place to get away from it all, place to see the world. the three kids are up high now, in the trees, looking down at the neighborhood. i kind of like it up there. lots of pecan trees in the neighborhood, and a few barking dogs in every direction. our own dogs are barking a bit, trying to establish their new territory, letting everyone know they're doing their job, guarding us. both of them bolted within a few days of getting here, maybe they weren't entirely comfortable. but they're getting more comfortable. it's quieter, safer, less traffic. pictures coming.