U is for Until

Until Thursday, it’d been a coon’s age since I’d looked at the river thinking I have to be in you. Until Friday, I hadn’t heard a snipe* since the last mating season. Until the heat wave, I hadn’t exposed my blindingly white skin to the elements since the earth tilted me away from the sun. Until Saturday, I hadn’t swept the garage for a year. Until Sunday, my butt hadn’t hit a bike seat in a month of . . . Sundays. Until the light started hitting just this way, I could only dream of the sound of peepers. Until this past weekend, I hadn’t had a gin and tonic on Paul’s porch in months. Until the high water and rising temperatures, I had never seen a muskrat really riding the current of the stream, tail relaxed: temporary bodysurfer of the valley. Until last night, I hadn’t slept with the windows open in a blue moon.

*Do not let some camp counselor or elementary school teacher take you on a snipe hunt, then tell you there’s no such thing as snipe. These people aren’t malicious—simply ignorant. You may have been on a wild goose chase, and real snipe are elusive. But many things that are elusive are real.

T is for Tim

Sometimes a word is fun just because there’s a Tim in it. Par example: Altimeter. Timid. Intimidate. Timothy. Timpani. Ultimatum. Timing. Stime. Lunchtime. Dinnertime. Suppertime.

But these are my all-time favorites:

Stimulate.
Intimate.
Ultimate.

Good words. Good times with my guy.

I’m lucky.

S is for Should

Should I worry that after several months of an abundance of work, suddenly no one’s called for a couple of weeks? Should I try to drum up business from here in Portland so that I’m ready to hit the ground running and make some money next week? Or should I let it play out, because next week I actually have to host my book group, which you’d think wouldn’t be a big deal, but I always have hostess anxiety, not feeling at all a natural at it, and it looks like at least fifteen people are coming, and I have to feed them dinner (thankfully, I’ll have help). So it wouldn’t be so bad to not have a textbook staring me down in addition. Should I stop spending so much time reading/writing blogs? It is becoming more and more time-consuming and obsessive. I am spending so much of my life in front of screens. Should I be concerned that even though I didn’t have that much work to do while here in Portland, I have also managed to (so far) avoid answering all the e-mail I swore I would answer and not written drafts of blog entries to have on hand when I really do get overwhelmed with work again? Should I go out and play in the snow today? Tim is getting sick, I am slamming immune boosters, I can’t afford to get sick too. But I feel it [the cold] lurking. Speaking of lurking, maybe I should forget all this and watch an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Just one. The wireless is out this morning, probably because of this big wet snow that I simply must go be in for awhile. The fresh air couldn’t possibly be bad for my immune system. I’ll go out. Right after Buffy. I should.

R is for Roller Derby

They had names like Goldie Headlocks, Miss Creant, Killer Quick, Lois Blow. They were fully helmeted, padded, mouthguarded, fishnetted. They were fast, graceful, tough. I wanted to be out there. I wanted to be them. I wanted to be 15 years younger and living near leagues.

Q is for Question

When we moved to Vermont, people stopped asking us, “When are you going to have kids?” and started asking us, “When are you going to get a dog?”