Out of the aughts but not the oughts and with no schedule until the deluge - teaching residencies hang ready to descend nearly immediately though I am yet suspended in the holiday space pretending I have nothing but skeins and yards and oodles of time to while away (wile away? I'm not that sly.)

I would type you a crossword puzzle poem draft and may still though it is Friday when all hopes of puzzle completion are dashed by pharses I cannot quote here as I tossed the paper into recycling at the coffee shop to spare myself anguish.

This morning I sent off my evaluative haibun (combination of 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird parody with prose elucidations for each way <12> I viewed the residency.)

Is today the day that begins the rest of my life so differently I'm blissed to be so blessed? Well, maybe not, though a man just waved wildly up at my window. I know him, and he walked downstairs to work with Jim, but there was a moment there of surprise.

On the way home from the essential coffee shop I peeked into the city people outdoor garden goods area where the cut trees leaned until recently. It's still redolent of fir sap. Ahhhh. We took down our fat celebratory tree in time for it to be whisked away by the yard waste fairies at no additional charge and without having to hack it limb from limb. I love the little miracle of leaving something it took two of us to wrestle up the hill beside the yard waste bin and returning from coffee to find it disappeared.

I've nearly finished reading Mark Doty's DOG YEARS memoir. I've wept over his losses: lover, one dog and then the other, and for mine. June 17, 2007 we let Cruiser go. I miss her. Her late-life photos show what I couldn't see then, that she lived to be an old, old girl, our great great Dane just past eleven.