poolside

One time I was in San Diego and sipped a latte on the lido deck of the Hotel Del Coronado. I felt like a Kennedy, and do now. We put up the pool. I lounge beside it, paddle around in it, skim it with the blue plastic net, wait for it to pop and drain, flooding the basement and the neighborhood with pristine blue water. but not yet. Now, it is summer, in the high eighties, and I am a happy portlander. I have even let my husband off the hook for not buying me an air conditioner, a condition of our marriage. Or was that a dishwasher? I forget. I remember the deal was some major appliance and I get to decorate the house. Well I did.

I was just offered an opportunity to submit to an anthology called knockers. I will, I think. My dear and double-breasted readers, You can too. I don't know the url, but that will get you to the author's website.

So, the pool is up, the heat is on medium low (weather-wise) and I am loving it. There is so much to say.

I think what inspires me the most, as I sit on the slanted grass hill at Hosford and watch the transparent moon sneak above the city, is the ethereal nature of my life. I am no longer where I was. I am here. I was here a year ago -- two years ago, now -- when the man who is now my husband, lay with me on that same hillside and explained the quality of night in the city, how it never gets really dark. And my eyes have adjusted to this light, and this schoolyard, where Sid runs with the pack that are the Hosford Dogs, and we are a part of this neighborhood.

I put my house on the market, my house in Talent, the one I was going to live alone, grow old and die in. And I have so few regrets. The money helps with that. But if I could go down there, remove the twig-shaped drawer pulls from the kitchen cabinets, and put them in my pockets, I'd be good to go. They're mine, after all, and I am in a sort of reminiscent kinda space, where nothing seems real, the floor under my feet appearing only as I step forward into this still so new life.

It is mid-summer already.