Apparently I've become a weeding weakling.  A season of sitting on my bottom and writing and doing little else has rendered my wrists shaky and my legs jello.  After only thirty minutes of weeding.  Ach!

We were sad to see Maurice Sendak had died.  He would have been pleased to hear Merry, at age three, recite Where the Wild Things Are complete with sound effects.  This morning we sat in the sun room and drank our third cup of tea as Martin read his obituary out loud.  I will read Micky in the Night Kitchen with just a twinge of sadness from now on.

The house smells of baking sweet potatoes.  Yesterday, before rain filled the night with a wonderful, healing song, Martin mowed a path through the garden so now at least I can see the blue haze of speedwell and the white azalea petals among all the weeds.

Martin is packing up hundreds of poetry books and bringing home lamps and rugs and pictures and all that has filled his office for seven years.  It is a mercy that the Fine Arts building is slotted for work this summer due to asbestos, because he is only one of a great crowd packing up their offices and filling the elevator with boxes.  It feels better to be part of a crowd surging outwards than one lone fellow, the one who was not tenured, stumbling down the stairs under a tower of books.  Of course he'll use the elevator.  It just seems sadder to stumble down the stairs.

I am filling the basement with boxes and furniture, as well, for the first of a series of clean-outs that will eventually end with a pod, or a moving van, or the back of the pick-up, if need be.

Merry loves to chat about where we might live next, especially the house we might occupy.  Finally, after a long discussion one morning, I said, "Well, maybe we'll just sell everything and live in our car."

Merry made a face.  "That might be a little too small," she said.

"You can have your own seat," I pressed.  "All to yourself.  Some people live in their cars."

"I don't think they live in a Subaru," she said, "Not a family of five.  Besides," she continued, "Can you imagine what would happen to me at school when my teacher asked me to draw a picture of myself and my house?  It would be me, in front of a blue Subaru!"

Ach.  So scratch the car.  And scratch the almost-acre garden.  What were we thinking?  We're not big garden people, I've decided.  Just enough.  It will become my new mantra.  Just enough, and maybe, some days, a little more.