and then it was may

All the buds have exploded into leaves. There are full shadows laced onto the curtains, and our backyard looks a lot less naked--and shitty--when it's so green back there.

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I spent a lot of time in the backyard this past week. Friends came to town and we had six days of making dinners and drinking IPA, and driving back and forth to Chicago, and a damp beach, and running around Kalamazoo. There was Mr. Show and a really fine bourbon and fajitas and the new Josh Ritter album, and at one point I even put on a shirtdress and went for a walk around town.

I felt loved on my birthday, and that was better than the cake I sort of forgot to make (see also: a really fine bourbon).

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T-minus five days to summer night class. Six weeks until the beach.

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I'm debating a new author photograph. Please tell me which version of my face you prefer.

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Did I tell you that one of my CW students, in lieu of a broadside, baked me a lasagna? and that she wrote out the title on the top in string cheese? and that it was delicious to boot?

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BICHN this month or early next, or so they say. But good news from this place and this place and this place.

One of them even took three poems. That's, like, a glut.

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Here is a picture from the weekend that I really like.



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Good lord, I have to go plan this class. And put away the winter hats. And convince my landlords to cut the grass. It's May.