On Monday, the day of the great soaking April rains that made the world beautiful and green again, Jeff made a path all the way to the dirt road leading to Mr. Brown's cabin. It's the sort of path that you might see from your car window and set to dreaming. It's a path you want to follow just to see where it ends up for the sake of the who that made it. I love a rain that soaks the world just at the exact moment when the world wants to turn green again. I swear I could see the leaves on the trees unfurling and the green stalks of weeds growing tall. I like the earth with all it's clothes on. This morning it was almost cold and looking across the stretch of path between the sweet gum tree and the dirt road, I saw a dark green stripe in the middle of lighter and yellower cut grass. That's where I've been walking all winter and fall. I made that part. Good path.

I feel so completely choked for time. There is never enough to be slow, there is far too much rushing around for my taste. I don't do it (rush rush) therefore I am messy and distracted at all times. Either that or the laundry never gets put away or the bills are left late and unpaid or the beer bottles continue to accumulate at an alarming rate on the credenza by the front door. I like to drink my brew outdoors, of course, but I am too distracted and messy to remember to put the bottles in the recycling. Saturday mornings I am always so happy to get out of bed because the day in front of me is all mine mine mine. Of course it never turns out that way. The commode broke this weekend (well. It really broke months ago, it turns out). I won't go into details because they are completely horrifying (but let me just give props to Jeff who had to work beneath the house in a pool of our own you-know-what. He said, there's corn growing down here.) but it meant that our great happy plans were pretty much all shot to hell. Then Jeff spiralled downward thinking about the house and all the work that has to be done and we, neither of us, ever has any time or energy to devote to it. It made him so flipping scared and angry and frustrated that he wanted to go to the movies, canoeing, hiking, out to eat, out driving, anything to get away from home. We made plans, instead, to draw out a big map of the House Project on a huge sheet of paper which I think sounds totally fun. We're going to each spend one hour per day doing something on the house and more on the weekends. We'll have goals and rewards and all kinds of ridiculous shit because we're both absent-minded slackers when it comes to long-term projects but we're also both suckers for rewards. This is also the reason I haven't written my book. At least that's what I tell myself. I have it all planned, you should know, and have started several parts, but blah. So Jeff helped me make a strategy (which I am sooo tempted to put in quotes because puke puke) similar to the house strategy for this one. I ain't telling what it is though because whenever I tell plans I never follow through, as though simply saying the idea relieves me of the burden to actually have to do the idea. House + Book + Money + Garden = great master plan. "Strategy" figures prominently.

But today I will simply try to catalog many books and to enjoy the crisp perfection of North Carolina in the almost May. Break.