Ahoy, maties. Just cooked supper and I'm waiting on Jeff to get home. It's a good day. It even rained, halleluiah.

I'm trying to think how to translate my scattered (but also focused) thoughts here. I seem to have forgot how--how to update, how to think of my life in this somewhat narrative and definitely constrained format. Today I've been thinking about thinking about myself as a non-smoker, thinking about how much I dig Jeff, thinking about Animal Dreams, which I'm re-reading, thinking about selling every last one of my books at Amazon dot com. I'm working my tail off, too, trying to rectify my (non)working life. Fact is, I'm feeling pretty good about good old NC, the blackberries and the stray cats, the wood floors and the bright colors.

Peaches is my comrade in blackberry picking. She's crazy about the berries (me too) and she flips when she sees me picking some. She's a girl after mine own heart, Peaches. We love them blackberries.

We got two strays, one of whom I'm fond of, one of whom I'm scared of. The one I like I call Romeo (he's made love to old Harold, down beneath Harold's balcony, I tell you true) and he's sweet but shy and wild. I've been trying to get close for months. We've reached the point where he'll sit two steps below me and one time he even sniffed my foot. The other fella, who is a mean and tough looking old tom, I'm a bit more warry of. He's friendly to me (excessively so), but the all the other cats are dead scared of him, so I figure I ought to be too. I never trust any creature too friendly.

I'm feeling good about everything here just as we're really focusing on leaving. Not soon, but soon enough. We have a miraculous plan that involves Guatemala and it's just opened the whole world of possibility unto me. I'm taking Spanish in the fall and we're trying to remember all we learned and then forgot, each night. Yo te amo. I remember that.

I wanted to write here something about love, but I'm not ready yet. I've learned more than I ever knew in the past year and I have things to say but I don't know how to put them in language. Tonight is not the night. It's almost after nine, and that, my friends, means it's almost bed time. I can't think this late. Later, later. Let's try again then. Adios amigos.