Oh, it's been a while.
A new year, and many changes, a few of which I'm not quite ready to say out loud yet. Suffice it to say that we've been back on the island since mid December, and we're smitten. (Again.) For so many reasons. Not the least of which is the beautiful snow we've had in the past few days, which is slated to be rained away later today, last I checked.
Today, D is up at work for a few hours while I sit with grits and a mug of hot tea fighting off the worst bladder infection I've ever had. Trying to drink + cranberry it away = bad idea. Really, really bad idea.

Soon, a road trip back East. Soon, so many good things. 2012, I'm happy you're here.

Sweet potato soup and a day of Spring (Fall) cleaning; my folks and grandmother are spending the weekend at the farm and I need to carve a third bedroom out of our small, improvised office. The season mostly wrapped up, I'm using the occassion to pile nine months- three years worth of files into totes and haul it upstairs, to one of the only two closets in the house. We're making progress, but it's slow. Luckily, my family have a five hour drive ahead of them; I've got time.

I've also, I hope, got time to make my mother a cake of some yet-to-be-determined sort, and to make copious use of streamers and balloons. Her 60th birthday was a few days ago. My mother never missed a birthday of my brother or mine, to cover the house in streamers and balloons after we went to sleep and again before she went to work, for us to get off the school bus, decorations strewn in the trees at the bottom of our long, long driveway; it is an important tradition.

Soup is no more, back to that third bedroom.

Google translating Cuban poetry from a battered soft cover copy of a text published when I was seven, bought in a sticky, bustling, diesel scented market in Havana; the most beautiful cover.

Pasting to preserve my typing:

Midwestern lawyer
the same mediocre lawyer
author of fifteen volumes of poetry
novels and
plays and essays
all of little value today
except the first anthology
Spoon River
one of the best books ever written that no man
never in any language
this type of work do some crazy nobody knows
Pro
not for fame
or money
or to worship anyone or anything
but in a natural way:
suchas child that smeared a wall,
an old man reading a newspaper in the sun
or the baker kneads the bread of the poor
each early morning of god

Dear everyone: Be good to each other. Conjure happiness (not just for yourself, but for others as well). Don't send me thoughtless centre-of-the-universe emails, they might just be the first thing I read in the morning, and then I'll remember that you're an asshole for the rest of your existence. It's just one stream of bad energy against you, but do you really need that?

No? No.

Drglffffgachtljasfkddd.

Dear today: Be nice, please. Please?

Two scenes from a (hazy) happy weekend:

I love these people. This place.

A fantastic night, and a Sunday spent in pajamas and bedhead. A concert in a barn. Too much to drink, in wool socks on hay-covered wood floors. A party in the back of the farm van, on cushions, with bottles of wine and whiskey, and homemade pizza for the parking attendants. Old friends. New friends. This farming community, even in its wider radius, is a beautiful thing. We are so lucky.

Today, the two of us in our pajamas on the sofa, lying in a pile and watching dvds. A break for cookie making.

Now he works on the goat house, while I restore some order to ours. I wish Monday was more weekend.

A beautiful night with parts of the crew and scattegories. And copious booze. And a cold pool. The first time in a while that I've found my way to bed after two.

Texts from a friend at Sasquatch, breaking my heart by naming off current acts.

Chapped lips and dirty hair. Today is going to be one for staying in. For improper clothes. For multiple small meals all day long. For books and the handmade quilt on our sofa. For strong coffee drowned in cream.

All of these things sound perfect right now.

Tomorrow, I make the farm a not-for-profit. Another thing that sounds perfect. Let's hope that it is.