The Real Deal

Here I am again.  Nice to see you.

I'm teaching creative writing again, after so many years, the last copy of my syllabus exists only on a diskette.  I am really not legit anymore.

On the bright side, having not seriously written anything for the last twelve years, I'm so out of practice that the exercises suggested in the textbooks I'm considering actually look fun.
So I might try to do the homework along with my students, just for kicks.  Zen mind, beginner's mind.  I have no excuse anymore. I disentangled myself from chairing the academic senate again at the end of this year.  It was a tough year.   What the job required, ultimately, was more interest than I actually had.  I did what I could, which wasn't much.

As my students say, I ain't trippin.

About that, anyway.

The big machine that sucks up money is in warm-up mode.  We just cleared the lot, and several simultaneous projects are happening: well, temporary power, grading, paving, septic...and then there is the house, which in my OCD-ness build a to-scale model of out of Legos, then covered it in cardboard painted blue:

This is very close to what the house will look like.  Cape Cod-style meets industrial, with some old-fashioned Greek proportions.  Galvanized steel roof.  V-channel rustic siding with six-inch trim.  Big sliding doors that disappear into the wall.  Not pictured: a lean-to glass greenhouse attached to the kitchen.  Cat5 or 6 hardwired into every room.  Solar-heated radiant floors.  Reverse-osmosis water treatment.  Two five-thousand gallon water tanks.

It's bigger than I thought.  The garage is actually underneath, which makes it three stories tall.  It will have three bedrooms, three full bathrooms, and an apartment bootlegged into the side of the garage.

It's going to be very expensive.  Go big or go home.  I just don't know what to say in my defense except that I've waited almost twelve years--Jeff and I have waited almost  twelve years, and I will be much much closer to 50 than 40 before I'll ever see it.

This is our dream.  This is where my creativity has been for the last few years.