Gah! Last week of class (hurrah!) and I'm trying like mad to get my grading done/get my final exams written and posted to my online courses and the dang online platform keeps crashing all around me! Of course, I am partly pleased as this means I have a very good excuse for not doing my work. I'll take it, brother.

My brain is all better since last I posted. I got so worked up and out of sorts and then? Fine. Like a switch that was turned off got turned back on. Since then I have decided to just try to be happy right where I am, doing exactly what I do, living exactly where I live. In other words, embrace the inner English teacher. I want to stop being dissatisfied with everything. So, I have resolved to like my job. Meanwhile, I have also resolved that I will be getting a library science degree online starting spring 09. You'd think that the two were mutually exclusive (how can I really love what I do if I am trying to do something else? But it's not true! I must love what I do IN ORDER to be happy enough to move toward doing something else. I can't get diddly done when I'm miserable and crying.) I really really really love librarianship. So yay. I'm just going to do that and stop thinking how I'm stuck. I'm not stuck.

On Friday night we went to watch free music at the Bynum General store (I love it there) and the singer works at our local co-op. She has this great big voice, but she is a little tiny woman. I really liked watching her, barefoot, toes curled around her stool. She didn't have enough material for two full sets, so she just played all of her songs twice through. Kids ran around the stage (Ossie did once, but then got shy). We were among families, old country people, and all the young (and old, I guess) bio-diesel hipsters. After the show, the local fire works finally got to do their thing (July 4th was rained out until then) on the Bynum Bridge. I loved the rinky-dinkyness of our local fireworks. Ossie did not agree about them being rinky dinky.

We hung out with our friends Martha, Kent, Forest, and Ben and ever since then Ossie has instructed us to call him Ben (older son). Matilda is Forest, I am Martha, and Jeff is Kent. Also, Ossie is going to be FIVE on his next birthday, which has nothing to do with Ben (who will be 11) or Forest (who will be...6, I think) or Ossie (who will be 3). This part is fun.

Just off the phone with Jeff. We are putting our Ramseur house up for sale, I think. Or trying to figure it out--our tenants (have I written about them? Holy mother of messes) left us high and dry last week, so we've got to get rid of this place. Anyone want a 1920 farmhouse on 7 1/2 acres? It's a neat house. Just too far away from work for us and too close to the road, I guess. Jeff said the peach trees are loaded and man, do I miss those peach trees. I miss my walk to the river, too.

How can I be content when everylittlething gets me all nostalgic and wistful? "When people say they miss me, I think how much I miss me too." Remember that one?

How about this one instead, from old man Yeats, godblesshim (tealeaf remembers):

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.