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It's been two months since I've posted. People have probably even stopped checking. I almost forgot how to log-in.

These past two months have been...well...they've been, and I've been, but sometimes only barely.

These months have had some interesting quote moments:

Overheard on a bus: "If they had said, 'The vacuum is your mother!' it would have been very Sophocles-like."

Overheard at a soccer game: "Uh-huh! Mr. Ireland was too a foot model before he came to Providence!"

Overheard in my living room: "My wife is crazy but in a good way, kinda like the bunny is crazy but in a good way."

Overheard myself say, "I promise I didn't get my job because I'm related to anyone in the Alabama, particularly anyone with the last name Wallace."

These months have brought some major changes:

Jen graduated with her M.A.

Buttercup had her first major injury, which subjected our carpet to some serious blood stains. (She's okay now).

People have passed away.

People have been born.

I finished out the school year with a new status: tenure.

My marriage has been at times covered by a soil that feeds it and inspires it to grow wonderfully. At other times, it is covered by the last soil thrown on a newly settled casket. This is new.

Scott came by to tell me Eddins and Rand were retiring. I was sad because Rand is someone who I wish would live forever. And teach forever. He is a right of passage. When I left, he gave me a book from his personal library and told me to do something important. In some ways, he is still my conscience.

These months I have been creative in other ways:

I have photographed and altered and experimented.

My work has danced in sepia.

For the first time, I spray-painted something and it looked terrible. I have unusually good luck with spray paint...usually.

I have designed more for work than in the past. They are feeding this, rather than suppressing it, and I have new toys on my office computer.

I have held close to my heart a poetic conceit that sums up the sorrow of this past year but have been concerned about writing it down because it uses the word "membrane," and that's not the right word. The image tells me it's not.