things are a little different around here since my wife fell off a horse and broke some bones in her hip. they put pins in her, and staples, and told her to stay off the leg for about a month. they gave her a walker and she kind of hobbles around on one leg. there are two problems, the first being that this is a tiny house, and we still have four kids and two dogs; the kids are teenagers, but everyone's taking up a lot of space these days.

but the second problem is that she hasn't really slowed down. if she would sit down and let me do a little more of the work, she would get some rest, and might be able to rebuild the bones which i'm sure will happen inevitably anyway. but instead she's up a lot. she can't ride her horse so she has a lot of nervous energy. she wants to control things and this generally means she gets up and does it herself.

sometimes i just want to get out of the way, like going outside and cleaning up piles of lumber that are sitting around. i actually have lots to do outside, and the weather is beautiful, clear sky, a little windy, cold but not too cold, the forest all around us - but i've been hanging around inside trying to encourage her to rest, and trying to do as much as i can of the housework.

the key in the tiny house is to keep a lot of space everywhere. don't let anything hang around on the floor. the main culprits here are dog toys, and kid shoes, and my shoes, of course, which i tend not to see. but almost anything can block the narrow path that she has to navigate up and down the house. and she's sensitive - not being able to ride the horse, has made her feel cooped up, helpless, frustrated.

on the book front i finally feel like i'm making a little progress. i have a few regular places where i advertise and i notice what kinds of response i get from advertising in each one. the other day facebook offered me ten bucks of free advertising so i took it and put it into new mexico and new jersey. for some reason i like new jersey for some reason as they always responded to my haiku. i feel that new jersey is an underrated market - who wants to try to sell in new york city, where everyone's got their nose in the air about books? i feel like jersey's more at my level, a little cosmopolitan, appreciates a good sense of humor, that kind of thing. i should probably track my sales, and see who is actually buying the books - it could be jersey people, or maybe new mexico, or maybe even quakers. i spoke up the other day on a quaker facebook page. i said hey, these aren't quaker stories, not even close, but i'm a quaker. and i put it out there.

my new advertising campaign says simply: NO SOLICITING: EXCEPT SHORT STORIES. it makes me laugh, i don't know why. it has a couple of cows out at the road, by our driveway, looking like they want something out of us. yes, they always want something out of us. we have good grass, and they like to wander around, eating it and pooping at will. i actually like the poop as i use it to make a good mulch to put on my garden. but back to the campaign. no telling if it makes other people chuckle or not. or know me. or have any idea about the kind of thing i write. i sometimes feel out of touch with who i am and whether people are actually responding.

the latest, eighteenth century leveretts: genealogist's journey (tentative title) is almost done. i'm going to send it to my brother, who reads very carefully and has really good advice. i'm also going to print a copy on the assumption that when it comes to catching typos, i do much better with paper than with online. i've read every single part of it at least three times, as usual. but that just means i begin skimming over parts of it that i practically know by heart. and that's not good, because that's where the typos are.

surprisingly enough, i actually have some time to write. i make it. instead of four rides to town, i try to get it down to three, or two and a half, and i go to the basketball games, if i can, and do the shopping. and the laundry, and the cats and dogs. i slowly get used to the routine; i go into the kids' house when they're gone, as they tend to be oinkers.

one is about to go to college, in august or september. he's an oinker too, but he tends to take care of his own trailer, and like it that way, and not bother us too much. his college is picked out, and he's getting himself ready, mentally. it's in the town where his grandparents lived, and where we'd all go to see them, in reunions, invariably hot in the summer and beautiful the rest of the year. it's new mexico state, so i have a new team, the aggies. they're not so good, at least in the basketball tournament, in march, though at least they get into it, which is better than some of my other teams, like southern illinois, or iowa. i tend to stay loyal to all teams that i've ever associated with, including cedar rapids washington, a high school, and if i send a kid to one of them, i like those too. in basketball that means i have one good team, kansas. i had a son who went there, and a daughter who works there, so ok, that's my team. and the ones i've worked for, including pittsburg state (kansas) and ashland.

but it's not really about sports, and he knows it. he's a little nervous, mostly about being away from home. i tell him, it'll be ok. he won't be that far away; las cruces is about ninety miles. it's a different climate, but mostly he hangs around his computer a lot anyway. and it's definitely the center of young-folk culture in this southern new mexico area.

i get on las cruces facebook sites, trying to get a sense of what life is like there. i always saw it from my parents' perspective: they built a home on the west mesa, but finally gave up and moved into a retirement community after about eight years. they were there maybe twenty-five, thirty years altogether, with us dropping in about once a year. sometimes we'd have big reunions, but mostly they were centered around this retirement community. we'd take walks in the cactus park that is near that village - full of exotic cacti, and a few roadrunners, and various other kinds of animals. and always the sun.

most of all, always the organ mountains, towering in purple over the city. they are actually about eight miles away, across the west mesa, but they tower. they're jagged and beautiful. the sun rises over them, and then, all afternoon, glows on them. when my father was about to die, and he knew it, he had the hospice park his bed right up against the door to the back porch, where he could see his mountains, and there, sure enough, he died, with the mountains watching over.

so i admit i have some memories of the place: i watched both parents die there, and more, watched them become too old to function, too old to drive or get groceries. they showed me how to get old, or how to take it with grace. but i don't mind it. after they died my sister couldn't stand the place, but i had pretty much the same feeling as always. now that we're in a town with no stoplights, it seems like the biggest of cities: fast cars, confusing traffic, even some public transit.

so we were down there the other day, looking over the new venue. i took the two older boys, and we stayed the night. the younger one wanted golden corral, so we went. but we'd had mcdonald's earlier, and strangely enough, he wasn't hungry. nevertheless the place had the entire football team in it. they overwhelmed the place; someone had bought the whole team dinner. my guess would be that this would be about four hundred dollars, but, probably nothing to them. the players were ecstatic. here they were, pounding people, cranking out the calories day in and day out, and now, all you can eat in a steak house. my son's jaw dropped; he was speechless.

then back home, across the white sands. the moon will sit on those dunes, and then, beyond them, the mountains, and we go up and over, and we're home. we're comfortable here, finally, and when we roll into our driveway, out at the last stop in the mountains, we, or at least i, breathe a sigh of relief.