Quo Vadis?

We may have perfected this grand experiment: It's glued to seventy degrees on the front porch here in 2740X, a high blue cloudless sky and not really all that much breeze. The crickets are three hours early. The squirrels are hollering. The Toad, vaccinated, sleeps. AMR's just off to work. I am not. I have The Toad's nap to fill and then a half-cooked plan to walk him, should he wake happy, the mile up past the high school to one of the bevy of new pun-based frozen yogurt shops that somehow sprung up in this town between now and the last time I was paying attention. Yotopia. Yotastic. Yophrates. Yo Mama. These are by-the-ounce-type places, fresh mangoes and kiwis in clear bins and a wall of soft-serve levered machines full of flavors that taste nearly like what they're named. The Toad favors these kinds of places. He favors yogurt, favors fruit. I favor The Toad. Ergo, Etcetera: The motto of our little university here on the knoll of this wee hill.

I need to mow the lawn.

I need to do many things, really—need to get ready for all the everybody who's coming to visit this child over the next however many weekends, need to get the flowerbeds turned and pansied, need to think about getting daffodils and tulips in on time for the first time in however many seasons, need to consider a quick crop of greens, need a list of the things (floor, trim, primer, paint) that still must be done to the writing shed, need to spend new time at the desk. The book found a happy home, and now, like always, it needs tearing down and piecing back together. So too, it seems, did and does my mental health. A novel might be the opposite of a forecast. You only get 24 hours for the latter. For the former, you get damn near all the hours there are. Some days this is the best thing there is. Others, you wish you were a ballplayer, wish all those folks had come to see you do one discrete thing in one sharp moment in time.

The downhill mouse's swamp sunflowers are blooming. Seems late this year, but the policy around here holds no matter what: we will take anything blooming at just about any time.