the month that never ends

Remember back when you were a little kid and it was almost time for summer vacation? It didn't matter whether you loved or hated school--each May was an exercise in patience, no matter how successful. I can still see the windows along the side of my classroom, open as far as possible with the glimpses of green and warmth and light beckoning me outside. Months of freedom to bike ride and explore and tramp around the neighborhood with friends--just out of reach.

Not to make the obvious connection with too heavy a hand, but....


Time is acting funny these days, and even though I know that August 1 will be here before I am prepared, I feel as though I am not making any progress. Ending a business, it turns out, is as exhausting as starting one, and so my hours at the office are very off-kilter and bittersweet. The relief when this is done will be considerable--for better or worse, it will be finished and I will be able to move on ahead. I've never been good with living in limbo.

SO. Anyway. I am up to my eyebrows in library goodness these days, spending evenings immersed in ideas and plans (rather than tackling my last paper for this semester, due 7/31. Arrggh). One of the first things that I think I want to tackle, aside from the chicken situation, is a wood-fired brick oven in our backyard; it is too damn hot to bake in the house, and yet bread is easy and so much better from scratch. The separate summer kitchens of old suddenly seem perfectly reasonable in my mind, since our little house doesn't have central air. We put in a small window unit at the beginning of July that we had but never used last summer, and it is such a relief after the stifling June weather that I refuse to heat up the oven. With any luck I can convince a friend of ours who has built several ovens for himself to come over and share his wisdom--maybe in exchange for some garden overflow or another swap.

Most of the research & writing & whatnot happens in my office, tucked away at the back of the house with a view to the graceful Japanese maple out by the fence and a busy mommy robin with a nest in a low-hanging branch of the giant hackberry that dominates our backyard. Plenty of avenues for distraction, even before Colby takes up residence as a purring expanse of fur next to my laptop. I love how the boys are just around; I am never without one of my little familiars. As daunting as it seems to anticipate spending so much time at home, I should remember that I will certainly not be without company!

I think my first non-profit interview will be with a wonderful place called the Earth House Collective, since I have been there a couple of times over the past month--once for a worm composting workshop, and a week later for contra dancing (which deserves a post all its own). It is a space that is used by many other non-profits and small groups and seems like a good place to start my foray into green and progressive happenings in Indy. The collective is housed in an old church building, complete with a defunct baptismal font, dark red carpeting and a motorized chair for the elderly and handicapped that lurches alongside the stairs as you climb to the sanctuary. Ah, memories of my PK youth!

Depending on how these last few days of running an office go, this may be my last post for a bit. I want to get some pictures posted of the garden and lot, so you have a frame of reference for the space that we have to work with, but I also need to write my last paper and get through my remaining time of commuting to the burbs. Oh, and figure out a chicken coop if possible. Oy!