The car feels strong and bottom-heavy, it keeps going when I feel the need to pedal faster. It’s disorienting driving a car after cycling for several hours.

We contour the gilded canyon bowls at sunset, travelling north. Long shadows like blue fingers hug the hills. A dip in the ridge reveals downtown on the right. Deer tracks jog up the limestone bluffs, Yaupon berries are still red, cast in a mini-explosion along the bottom of the bluff. In traffic at an intersection I notice a pair of cowgirl boots with silk flowers inside, roadside bouquet. I think this is very Austin and wonder whether this is a resting place.

At the restaurant, I struggle to wipe chocolate buttercream icing off my pink merino sweater; small brown crumbs sit high on the wooly pile. In the middle of an anecdote I forget what I am talking about as I watch Chas lick the remains of a large block of sweet cream butter off his fingers. While wiping his right hand, the left dumps a cupful of toothpicks onto the floor. Ford asks me where the chef has managed to catch a baby squid. He demonstrates how the squid consumes food, I notice how dirty his hands are as he puppeteers the cooked squid’s tentacles, directing invisible food in towards the squid’s mouth. “I don’t like shrimp anymore,” he declares, while Chas pours ice water on my lap.

It is dark. Focused hypnotically, I migrate home beside fellow lights. we are travelling synchronously, automatically, snaking our way through the black canyon. Rut is over, I am seeing no more deer at night, a relief.

At home, I park the car, and carry a package of diapers under one arm along the moonlit driveway. It is a half moon, and I could play badminton on the lawn. The birdbath sparkles as I pass. You can hear the night in it’s crackling quiet, with a band of coyotes wailing a mile away. Orion has bookmarked the sky, and it’s especially bright, even as I approach the yellow incandescent halo of our home.

We leave the playground, and I weave along the lake, trailering the boys. In this warm winter weather, Austin has molted and begun to grow again in little green patches along the water. The rest of the landscape is still dormant, less agressive than the shoots. Clusters of Elephant Ears brazenly crowd along the bank, submerged and waving in the breeze.

The wind awakens me, and my rhythm intensifies while growing efficient. My muscles remember well; I biked for many years before children. I love the way my quadriceps begin to feel warm. I don’t feel this way when I run. My neck burns. I am smiling.

I pass under Riverside drive, and pause to watch reflections dance uninhibited on the bridge’s belly, winding up the concrete posts like white fishnet. Sliders anchor the river, basking in the sun, and we count them. I notice a canoe, motionless, with a fisher aboard, waiting.

It’s a dry day, and chrushed granite crunches as joggers pass us under the bridge. One woman smiles at the trailer, and I follow her eyes to find Chas’ sleeping head on Ford’s shoulder. I return to meditate on the coke bottle water, crystalline turquise jade with a fuzzy rockbottom, brimming with rippling silvery fry.

Barton Springs feeds the creek, the creek feeds the river.The dedicated swimmers, all three of them, are lumbering the length of the pool, their slow, regular paddle lulls me.One is wearing a wetsuit . The elm trees lining the pool are tipped with new leaves, on the pecans, empty shell cases gape at the sky on bare branches, so that we don’t forget that Fall ever happened. But it did, and so did Winter.

Closing windows on my desktop, I was cleaning up two days worth of clutter. Beneath three Ecto layers I found a cryptic little poem. Did I write this? I sat frowning for a few seconds. Then my eyebrows lifted my face; I had written it last night, my mind replied, but I needed to string together what facts I could recall: I had put on heavy eyelids, a light shone down the hall, metered by snoring, the laptop was too warm on my lap. A car dealership ad jostled my thoughts, Forwards, backwards, backwards. I had written this in my sleep:

I’m stop an elderly gelding
White and mellow
He is standing on a tidal flat.

A poem? Or was I dreaming? Did a TV ad filter into mysubconscience?
Did something happen to Marshmellow, the grey gelding I sold in Point Reyes? I feel compelled to search for his owner and find out.

I just turned a year older while thinking this over in my mind.

Kathreen inspires me to seek out color
and to perfect my stovepot coffee technique
(she compiled an excellent how-to)
Brownies with kids
sweetened last Friday afternoon:

(…video would have been even better)

and the easy pants tutorial is on my calendar.
On top of infusing her blog with such goodness, she conceived Whip Up!

Thanks, Kath!

There’s an open door before you
Shed last year’s skin before you go
A gift, upon the hearth below

Postcards, from a swap that Christina organized.

This is not the itsy bitsy spider, but a dead baby desert tarantula in the bottom of an empty bowl (left outside by the front door). Let’s bring it inside for examination! Here, under the bright sunlight in the kitchen:

…oops! don’t panic, it’s not dead, I guess!
Let’s take it back outside:

…oops! Shit! Back up, kids!

This is not the itsy bitsy spider, but a dead baby desert tarantula in the bottom of an empty bowl (left outside by the front door). Let’s bring it inside for examination! Here, under the bright sunlight in the kitchen:

…oops! don’t panic, it’s not dead, I guess!
Let’s take it back outside:

…oops! Shit! Back up, kids!

This is not the itsy bitsy spider, but a dead baby desert tarantula in the bottom of an empty bowl (left outside by the front door). Let’s bring it inside for examination! Here, under the bright sunlight in the kitchen:

…oops! don’t panic, it’s not dead, I guess!
Let’s take it back outside:

…oops! Shit! Back up, kids!