monday afternoon and i'm clunked back with puppy on lap, blogging, enjoying being out of the sun.

it's gotten to be high summer i think you could say. i go out into the garden and there are wild sprouts of weeds all over the yard busting out threatening to take over every place where they've started out; the garden itself is doing well with some vegetables appearing just to give me a good show and a bite to eat. hot, though - i come back in sweating, eyes itching, wanting to sit back in the aircon maybe with a fifth cup of coffee or something.

what's really botherring me is a kid who's caught in a behavioral trap - can't see his way out of doing what he's doing, not getting what he's wanting. if this doesn't work why keep doing it? or rather, something has to change but it has to be something you think of, that's under your control. we clearly are having trouble changing our ways.

i'm vigilant about dizzyness - had a big cinnamon roll this morning and then, later, a few pieces of another one. too much sodium? it seemed, at the time, like i badly needed mood correction and i've always felt cinnamon did that for me. at the expense, in this case, of a few pounds probably. it's the icing, the butter icing that will clog up my veins till i keel over. but somehow this morning i just needed the mood correction.

still reeling from a trip to iowa on friday. almost two hours to get there, it is two hours counting iowa city traffic, but my friends live in a farmstead out in the country, and have two red barns, and mulberries, and a horse, and are surrounded by corn. my view of paradise, i thought. plus the potluck was fantastic, they all make great food and still do, it filled me up and more so. caught up a little on what happened in my fifty years or so of absence. some people maybe were jealous. i talked about galesburg a lot, but believe me, they have nothing to be jealous of there. iowa city is a special place, enlightened, libertine, no matter how many thousands of apartments they jam into its center. galesbug on the other hand is a railroad town, and that's ok, i've learned to like it, but it's not iowa city. and never will be, as far as i can tell.

coming back i get a coffee on the illinois interstate, and i did the same thing last night, just to get through the late-night driving to make sure all kids are where they need to be at the end of the day. coffee leaves me a little zoing in the late night but hey, it's summer, days are about as long as they're going to get, and somewhere the Cabo Verde national team is glorifying in the international stage, since everyone knows, it's all about the world cup, even if nobody shows up for the games.