i love you. i miss you. i'm not sure what to do.

shower

- you just spit all over the screen

- i did?

- yes!

- i didn't mean to.

- this is going on the blog.

- *unenthusiastic laughter* i'm going downstairs.

peas

"yes i ate peas. i didn't eat all of the peas. i ate a lot of the peas. i didn't want to eat all of the peas. i ate some peas."

mess

i'm finishing up my third straight last week of long hours. despite my best efforts, the harder i work, the more effort i put into getting things done right, the more they break and the further they get from being done.

carriage ride

rochester, ny

few people know that batman lives in rochester.

hobbes in his pod

with rooms and rooms to stretch out in, it is better to be wrapped in a pod, looking out.

North Jersey

I used to live in North Jersey. Just for a year. The first year we were married.

We lived in Clifton, right across from the Pathmark on Paulison Avenue, near the border of Paterson. I miss a lot of things about life there. It was surprisingly simple, having so little money and spending so much of it just on rent. Five years later, we still don't pay as much for our mortgage as we did every month on rent. Actually, we never paid rent as low as our mortgage payment anywhere we lived.

One of the neat things about living in a huge metro region like that is all the nooks and crannies. Towns can lose something when they're so close to an international city like New York, but they make up for it by having interesting corners and people and buildings. I guess all cities have those kinds of things, but in the shadow of New York, you start to relate to small things.

Right before we left, we discovered this sculpture garden. I think it was on the grounds of Clifton City Hall. And about the same time I started noticing the manhole covers and the way they said, "City of Clifton."

I bought our first snow shovel in the Clifton Home Depot. There was supposed to be this once every 50 years snow storm, and I thought it would be good to have a shovel, even though we had no driveway to clear. I went to the store and they were sold out. As I was walking out, a new shipment came in and I was the first to grab a shovel before this crowd of people saw them and started a rush. The snow storm never came. Just kind of didn't happen for some reason.

I broke the shovel our first winter in our house. We had a lot of snow that year and it was too heavy and it broke the shovel. I used it maybe 3 times.

I've also broken every other snow shovel I've bought since. See my profile. It snows a lot here.

two dogs

two dogs on a leash
lunge toward the world; cower
they are the same dog




Susie is sitting in her new spot at the front door, the only window low enough to provide her with a view out of the house. She spends hours there, watching even when nothing is moving.

Williamson, New York

Near Mendocino, California 

loons

This morning there were loons on the water when I woke up. I haven't heard loons for years, but their calls are unmistakable. Everyone else was still asleep, except the dog who was at the side of the bed as soon as she heard me stir.

This side street in Tupper Lake is strikingly quiet. I can't help but notice that there is no steady stream of traffic half a block away, no white noise from the train tracks, no steady stream of people walking by, no kids playing football in the street.

And I can't help but notice I've spent as much space on this page writing about the noise that isn't happening as I've spent writing about what is going on. At least in such a quiet place, my conscience doesn't have to scream to compete with the noise outside. I suppose that is a welcome change of pace.