I'm glad you happened

 It seems fitting that I'm finally getting around to writing, like, an actual post, since one year ago today I was driving down to this town and discovering--surprise!--that the house we'd lined up was actually full of pee and fleas. That night, my brother drove me to Savannah and we met up with my friend Chad, and I only cried once while my brother took me from bar to bar, trying to distract me, while I thought ohmygod ohmygod whathaveIgottenmyselfinto. Later, we'd drive back to Atlanta, me following his Toyota, and I would weep for three hours. If you saw me on that day, if you passed a car with Michigan plates stuffed with bags of clothes and boxes of books: don't worry! I am fine.

Also, aside to the last 364 days: I'm glad you happened.

But anyway! It is not last year, that silly sack labeled 2011. It is the middle of this summer, and today I clipped eight hundred pounds of herbs from the containers on the back deck. Earlier, in the morning, the dog and I went running and dripped sweat all over the sidewalk. And on Friday, we went to Savannah and drank giant beers in the afternoon, and the summer classes are sailing along and have one full week and a handful of days left. It's been nice--if not the whole getting up to teach at 8 am thing, the whole let's-talk-about-poetry-and-holy-shit-are-you-guys-ever-motivated thing. Nothing washes the taste of jaded spring semester students away quite as effectively as students who are legitimate hot shit.

It's also that point of the summer when I realize what little time is left, and that my summer to-do list will not be fully realized. But that's the annual tradition, too, isn't it? As it turns out, I probably won't finish (or start) a new essay this summer. And I won't finish that Law & Order chapbook I've been beating away at. And I won't make an Excel chart of all the readings that I come across and think oh I want to use this one day, and then cross-reference all those readings by themes and length and genre. And I won't bake a decent loaf of bread. And I won't get any better at running.

But I hung out with the friends we've made here. And I grew some things in pots. And we went to the beach and drove over the bridges that connect Whitemarsh and Wilmington Islands. And we ate corn from the market. And I sat on a dock drinking beer with way-old friends and talked about the mistakes we've made in our lives. And I watched the sun set over Green Bay. And I've eaten a lot--a lot--of guacamole. And I rode a bicycle around downtown Toronto and clinged my bell at a man about to get out of a cab and he said, irritated, Oh, enough with you guys and the bells already. And I met a lot of dogs. And I sat in multiple hammocks.

And the summer is not quite over yet, of course: there are the classes to say goodbye to, and the roadtrip up to the top of the mitten to see the B's family, and a wedding in Ann Arbor. And only then does the school year start up again, and I get to daydream about May and June of next summer, when the to-do list will be as long and impractical as always.