Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

Tuesday the temps reached 90. Around 5 pm, I realized I am so over the heat of summer. I'm ready for cooler temps and then the cold that will follow. For one reason. Mosquitoes. They've been just awful all summer long. The boys and I can't step outside the back door without an immediate frontal, side, and rear attack. I'm not exaggerating. It doesn't matter what time of day we try to get out. The mosquitoes are waiting and ready to assault us. I've doused myself in more bug spray the last three months than I have my entire life. The poor doggoes end up with mosquitoes on top of mosquitoes vying for space on their snouts. Taking a walk is miserable for them and me. For whatever reason, the mosquito problem seems to be relegated to my side of the village. As soon as we get three blocks away, to the east side of the village, the mosquitoes lessen. And two blocks further they all but disappear. There is a creek about a hundred and fifty yards behind the house, which...

Before I set out for my cross-country cycling adventure, my dad gave me a cardboard box. We were sitting in the living room of the little cabin he had built, where when we'd go visit, we'd walk in and see Mom sitting on the loveseat, surrounded by her magazines, books, paper, and pens. I opened the box to find several rubberbanded stacks of letters written by my mom to her parents, my grandparents. On top of the first stack was a sticky note, and in Dad's precise engineering handwriting I saw '79, '80, and so on, all the way to '86. He had painstakingly gone through all of the letters, putting them into order by year. Several more rubberbanded stacks of letters were labeled the same way underneath the first stack. As I stared at the letter on top, at Mom's clear and elegant handwriting, I wondered how many tears Dad shed while reading through the hundreds of letters. I closed the lid on the box. I would wait until we got home to begin reading them. The nex...

Finally, the official word came through: promotion granted. I've known unofficially for a little more than a month now that my promotion review team had recommended me for promotion, but until the Board of Trustees says yes, the recommendation is just hanging in limbo. And because my mind works the way it does, for the last five weeks, I've had thoughts of the Board scrutinizing the recommendation, picking it apart, rubbing their hands together in glee just before banging the gavel down, emphatically saying, "Denied!", much like Suze Orman does to those who don't have the money to buy the luxury item they really want. Thankfully, my little scenarios are only in my head. Today the email I've been waiting for arrived in my inbox. Like a little kid who'd just received the best piece of candy from the pinata, I did a booty dance in my chair and waved my hands in the air. My title as of the fall semester will be Professor II of English, which means I'll h...

After a great day on the bike yesterday, I sat for awhile and made this video. Though I cried during most of the making of it, being creative and doing something for someone who means so much to me brought about much joy. The juxtaposition of sadness and joy seems to be how most of my days are right now. The song is "Remember Me" by Bella Ruse and is available on Jamendo, under the creative commons license.