I wake up and get some ice water. Warm bare feet, cold tile floor. An email from Justin half a world away, remembering our conversation almost 4 years ago. Are we still the same people?

My shelf looks the same. I need to force myself to work on it today. All the curriculum and guides and books that have come in are all still piled up there waiting to be looked at and categorized. Lesson plan templates aren’t made yet. But the district is on spring break this week (i.e., all their friends are home) so we’re letting them have theirs this week, too. We start again on Monday.

A slight fever. I want to walk. It’s not even 7:30am yet.

We go, Shane with his water bottle and me in my pajamas. We head up dirt roads and trails we haven’t been on before. For almost two hours we walk - into the hills overlooking our neighborhood on the slopes, behind houses, through arroyos. Somewhere in there we found a home under construction, nobody around, and we sneak in to explore. Instantly the smell of sawdust and raw wood is strong and inviting and brings back memories. The floors are concrete, they’ll soon be saltillo, I bet. The windows are so clean I want to get my fingerprints all over them. Two kiva fireplaces. Surrounded by piñon, juniper and chamisa. Views for 40 miles or more.

I turn around and notice a van has pulled onto the dirt driveway. Busted! We can’t see enough to know if they were still in the van or had already entered the house. We tiptoe over to the sliding glass doors, praying they’d be silent when we opened then, and slip out, jump down and take off into the piñons and wind out to the road on the other side, narrowly escaping capture.

At home more water, some chai, some reading while the kids played, and an accidental nap curled up in the ivory flannel sheets with the sky blaring blue and white, contrasty and obnoxious for the sleepy, through the windows.

Later, I get up and throw a flannel on over my t-shirt and get some blueberry yogurt. I sit down in the office, Sarah and her friend popping in every few minutes to giggle and ask me questions. Shane shows me a prototype for the inside pages. I blink and try to focus. I feel like I’ve spent the last three days catching up on the last six months. I feel like stretching from the floor to the ceiling and holding it there until everything is flexible and strong and breathing again.

The doors and windows are open. 67 degrees. I suppose I’ll need a better lunch than a few spoonfuls of blueberry yogurt.

Posted by tee in de la vida
Leave a Comment | Permalink | Add this to …

Thunder! And the dogs are running madly back and forth across the yard trying to catch it.

This is sublime. Instead of rushing through everything at warp speed, cutting corners, putting things aside and collecting unread/undone piles around the room, constantly watching the clock, I can just… work. And play. The little woven boundaries around my life are nice and loose now, I can slip in and out and do with every one of my hours what I choose to.

So I’ve got spreadsheets on various real estate market research and demographic analysis spread across the desk, and I’m developing my market segmentation and timeline. Denver’s first, by early next month. Possibly Tucson next. Or Houston. Rippling out from there, with a new city to work with every couple of weeks.

So maybe I’d be at the office now and be surrounded by similar spreadsheets and maybe I’d be making similar deductions and be similarly diligent. But this is my work. And you can’t sit and listen to Peter Gabriel with the windows open in a thunderstorm with no shoes on and a cup of chai and go outside and stretch in the storm wind or have a late, lazy lunch with your lover or watch the dogs play through the window or the kids work like a team on chores or take a walk under the mammatus or read-then-daydream at The Office.

Posted by tee in de la vida
Leave a Comment | Permalink | Add this to …

I stopped and tied my shoes and shut the door.
Walked the old rotted fence along the inner narrows of the valley.
Freckled with soft new sage, just getting their flowers.
Teasing, like a child’s fist full of ready-made bouquet.
The Ortiz Range barely visible from here in the low early light.
Today would’ve been the first sentence of the 8th chapter.

I trusted myself, and the sun lasted just long enough.

Posted by tee in verse
Leave a Comment | Permalink | Add this to …

We woke up and rolled around awhile, reluctant to move too much at 6am on a Saturday- but we wanted to get something of the early morning before everyone else did. Water from the pitcher, we poured out glasses and watched by the big windows where the dogs were on perch for bunnies and other vicious beasts to protect the house from.

Something darted out from behind the truck then, and shrunk back just out of sight. I strained to look around; it came wandering out. Coyote. Maybe 50 feet from where we stood. Delicious gray and rusted brown, full coat for winter. Kenya winced and whined, unsure whether or not she ought to draw attention to herself there at the window. The coyote looked back. At us, I thought at first. But a moment later, another appeared, running out from behind the truck to join him by the end of the driveway. Together they took off to the north, I went outside in my socks and pajamas to see for as long as I could. At the fence beyond the neighbors, they split up - one disappearing behind the house and the other running off down the street. Hard to differentiate them at a distance from the grayed winter sage.

I wonder how often they visit early in the mornings while we sleep.

Posted by tee in de la vida
Leave a Comment | Permalink | Add this to …

At night we flick on the radio - jazz, usually - so soft that it’s nearly inaudible at first, but as our breathing gets slower and quieter and the night relaxes a little, it ends up just right. Our bed is low to the ground, buried under ivory flannel sheets and big bulky old pillows. Next to the wall-length bookcase, usually with various pens and papers and dog-eared books and balled up socks scattered on the floor around it. On the other side, the glass doors out to the back portal where we can watch the shadows of trees and branches moving if it’s windy. Sometimes, a surge of fresh night air or a lone coyote shrill drifts in from the cracked open windows. The big sunflower night-light in the kids bathroom is the only beacon in the dark of the house.

Last night I lay there curled up inside all of those things for a long time, drifting around, fumbling for the volume knob on the cortex.

Posted by tee in de la vida, favorites
Leave a Comment | Permalink | Add this to …