It was hot enough today to fill Tucker's wading pool for the first time. Too hot to kayak.

I’ve been here a week now. A week and change. I’m starting to feel like life here is normal life. I’m starting to not-notice things like what time it is, half-way through the morning. It’s been hot today — easily into the 80s, maybe even 90. Summer is officially about a month away. Unofficially, it starts early next week — the Memorial Day holiday weekend. Yard Sale Weekend. We’re having a yard sale too this weekend. My neighbors and I. We’re making signs, cleaning house, tagging stuff, telling everyone we know. It’s a good little project for me — a change of pace [not!] from what I’ve been doing lately. Packing, moving, finishing up — I know teachers have a great job, a job on terms 90% of the world would kill for, but you know it’s not perfect when one of the best things about it is the amount of time you don’t have to spend there. Anyway, I’m home now, so enough with the attitude.

Tucker’s taking all of this in stride. He spends days like today sprawled on the cat perch in my kitchen window, keeping track of town history and muttering at the passers-by.

Tucker keeps track of town history from this catbird seat.

So it’s been a while since I posted here — I think the last time I wrote was about 46 years ago today. Seriously. That was the name of the post: 46 Years Ago Today… It was in November, on the anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. Doesn’t seem that long ago. It was, though. Even longer ago, this house was built.

All in all, it was pretty damn perfect outside today.

This house stands about a quarter mile up-street from my house. It belongs to my siblings and their families. It’s a great old grey ark of a house, and it used to stand under a wide, spreading cut-leaf maple, which had to be sawn down a couple of summers ago, because one of the huge higher limbs threatened to come down through the roof. A local logger took the tree down. He is an artist, that guy. The tree consisted of three or four stout trunks springing from a common base. Each trunk was easily 18 inches to two feet across, rearing up next to the old farm house and fanning out into dozens and dozens of smaller limbs that spread great shade over the whole front yard. The logger dismantled the 2 tons of that tree in close quarters to the house without dropping so much as a twig where it could do any damage. Too late, and separately, some of us thought it would have been cool to take down the tree to a height about three feet above the split into the separate trunks, and then carve seats and a small table into the stumps. I mean, as long as the great and fabulous tree had to come down (and it did), why not make a bit of a wonder out of its remains? A little barnyard bistro…