lately

Lately, it's been summer.

I have been working on something about Roy Chapman Andrews--an essay. It's been a while since I wrote, let alone published, long nonfiction, and there's something about that form rattling me a bit, though I think in a good way. There are many Post-it notes, a couple books pulled from the university libraries up in Athens and Atlanta, and a big piece of butcher's paper taped to my office wall.

I don't know yet what shape the essay will take, but I'll find it eventually. It is a good break from that other to-do list, the one that kind of scares me.

There is summer school, a class on telling stories and another of wide, wide-eyed pre-freshmen. There have been runs out to the beach at Tybee, and up to the beach in Carolina on a much-needed night out of town to see a band, and night spent driving around in search of the sunset. All this is a pitiful substitute for not going on a real vacation this year, but it's helping. So is the rain, which has been coming down steadily for three days and drowning the dill and parsley.

There have been big moves, too--not ours (thank god), but friends in town, and friends out of town. People moving from the south to the north. And a few weeks ago, I packed up my brother and watched him drive west, to San Francisco and a new job at that one company named for a fruit.

And the week before that, we went to the courthouse and made this whole nine-year thing of ours official, and now I am somebody's wife.

It's been oddly busy lately, is what I am saying. But in a good way.