mail drift

I haven’t seen my mail for over a month. Not even in the three days that I have been back. Somehow no one seems to know where it is.

This “no mail” state has me in a drifting mood. As if normal life hasn’t quite picked up yet. (Even as I’ve both unpacked and started the laborious task of outlining a new course for next year.)

As always after a return, I wake up early. I think about calls that need to be made and I wait until the world wakes up and I can start hassling it again. For instance, at 8:30, I called my doctor, found out she is on vacation, talked to a substitute and discussed the ticks Ed and I found all over us after an unfortunate romp in a field that seemed to be their Scottish headquarters. (We did not encounter ticks after that day.)

Yes, pulling them out with your nails is fine, so long as you don’t tear them apart. Pretty small down up there, aren’t they…You think you got them all? Come talk to me if you’re feeling feverish or sick.

I ask Ed if I were feeling feverish or sick, should I worry about Lyme disease or Swine Flu (Britain has a number of cases). We tossed a coin. Heads you worry about Lyme, tails – flu. The coin showed heads.

For recreation, I pulled more Texas weeds (a reference to their size) at Ed’s farmette until I realized that the man himself was reclining and I was using a diverse set of muscles to clear his land.

We took a coffee break and then went back to the strawberry stand to buy two more lovely boxes of berries. We wanted to tell the seller that she was underpricing the whole lot of them ($2 per quart for yesterday’s pick), but she seemed not to speak English well and so we just smiled and said thank you many times.

Ed can eat a quart of strawberries at a sitting. I returned the empty containers later in the day and talked for a while to the dad who first started tilling the land here two years ago. Great berries! Selling at the markets yet? We can only go to two markets each week and one is very far away. We have more to sell than that. We do better here.






In the evening, I drift in and out of work, pausing occasionally to pick a weed. And to smell the lavender – a flower that I planted here several years back because it always reminds me of travel.