finally!

i don't know what my deal was for the last month or so - stopped blogging, stopped checking email, barely returned phone calls. bad daughter / bad friend. and then tonight, as i was tiptoeing our sloppy trail in the half-dark, i was thinking of all those i missed. friends giving birth, friends in big-life transitions, friends living on sailboats (!), friends that have passed elsewhere. everyone in her own separate space, and yet we carry each other in each step.

sorry i'm so lame at keeping in touch.

another "finally": 6 more days of school! wow - so excited for gardens and ducks and blueberry bushes - and yet i know i'm gonna miss those little buggers, too. graduation this year is seven boys - all of whom i had (my first year of teaching!) as skinny/chunky eighth graders. truly good kids, every last one of them.

went to san francisco a few weeks ago with five students - i love traveling with random groups of kids . . . i guess it's the freaky combinations of personalities all meshing, like family. i love it. and - teaching high school girls my own funky carpenter skills (they rock!) and hatching out chickens in the home ec room together and learning to sew side by side. (i finished my first skirt tonight! I AM SO PROUD. me + sewing + fitting = miracle. thanks goes entirely to ila! i'm hooked!) and story-writing about family. tough stuff and they are willing to go there . . . i'm gonna miss all that.

but also REALLY looking forward to late-late nights. (i am already starting to make the transition, as you can tell from a 1 a.m. blog.) and bike riding, and being on the water, and digging in dirt, and being with friends - again.

okay, picture time. oaxaca trip, to start. cute skirt to come!

from that jack black movie.

sea turtles. my favorite.

it'd be lovely if i knew how to rotate this picture of my handsome husband.

and where is the really cool picture of me looking like a pro as i boogie-board?? (some may say it doesn't exist, but, like my singing voice, i know in my heart i'm really, really good.)