me, my careening head, aching back, bit-champing legs, and i are off to the barn.

guided by troubled eyes relaying inverted information to said mind, which upends it all with the weary-smiled good humor of a cooing mother and processess (only much, much faster) thousands of factoids of varying triviality. but never those of highest import. they’re far down, there, on the to-do list. hence, turbulence.

(almost) packed and (almost) ready to go.

there’s always one more item to be crammed into the suitcase, the confines of which are already bulging with the volume of my chronic tendency to overpack; one more tether tugging me homewards before i’ve even descended the stairs leading both to and from the front door. time, resenting my inability to fulfill its various increments, asks me if i’m making a mistake, here, and i have no answer, much less the right one. i’m not sure i believe in those any more, at least not where my family is concerned. it’s too late to process the weight of my own ambivalence (for fuck’s sake, it’s 1:00 in the morning. give yourself a break before you break yourself).

perhaps when i trickle from bed to floor in five hours i’ll be invigorated by the possibility of The Journey, trivial though the sojourn is in context of our flattened planet, and will skip down the stairs to my scarlet carriage so to sooner clasp adventure by the hand. Portlandia, ho.

cleaning at the start of a long day, week, month.

don’t expect much from me as far as blog action, today. it’s not that there’s nothing to be said (yesterday a friend remarked, “when no words come from Suzi, she is pissed.” fifty points for accuracy to you, grrl), but that my hours are more than accounted for. there’s a line, and tumblr does, at some point, need to step back and let the other kids have their time in the sun.

today i needed to Clean. this is how the cycle runs, here in my yellow corner: time passes, and messes are accrued. defensive tactics keep chaos at bay until the urge to descend upon the flotsam and deliver order arrives (that’s today). then, overdrive, with short self-congratulatory breaks for snacking and iPhoning, until i can see my face in the carpet and counter and wood and anything else in need of TLC.

tomorrow, the ass-crack of dawn will
be greeted with the equally-graphic sight of my sleep-deprived visage as my little red Acura carries me to the Oakland airport, where, after depositing the car at a safe pay-by-day parking establishment, i will fly to Portland (more on that later (probably tomorrow as i wallow in the boredom that consumes a solitary traveler as social as i)) where i’ll be until even earlier on Saturday morning. upon returning home, i’ll have just enough time to fling the dirty clothes into a pile—hopefully CLOSE to the hamper—repack, throw on my riding attire, and meet a friend at her barn. we’ll ride and pack up her colossal four-horse trailer, and then i’ll drive us both to her gorgeous home on Belvedere Island. the next morning, she and her lovely family will depart by car for a major horse show in Montana and i’ll be house-sitting, which here means playing with the two happy-go-silly black labs who don’t get to caravan with the rest of the Hogan clan, tumbling, practicing, frolicking in the city avec Daphne co, and running next to what I think is a small bay, if i have my marineform terminology straight (improbable).

so, that’s the next fifteen days of my life, for the benefit of the five or six of you who may possibly be interested. the other fifty probably kept right on scrolling after skimming sentences one and two. i’ll be here when i can and should. love to you all.