Hello! Good morning! My dog keeps lunging at the fence to have hysterical barking fits at the neighbor dog, which last a few seconds and then break up as calmly as if nothing had happened. (Paul is now stuck inside to think about what he’s done.) Oddly, this is not the neighbor dog who was whining so piteously for so long; that dog seems to have gotten his life together, which is a relief, even if his plaintive wails have been replaced by this more pugnacious claptrap.
I think it’s interesting that dogs are so obsessed with patrolling borders, but do not give a fig about fences. It’s as though, to them, the fence is not there: in fact they’re desperately trying to break through it, as though this would allow them to protect the yard more completely. Maybe if I peed along the property line. I don’t know.
The last two guests from our Guest Blitz 2018 have just left, and now our house will be quiet for at least a month. It’s a relief. I loved seeing everyone who came; they were excellent guests, thoughtful and kind. Plus they are some of my favorite people in the world. That helps. But it’s also nice to sit quietly and listen to the doves cooing in the trees this morning, all alone in my studio. I’m not sure if I’m an introvert or an extrovert, anymore: I’m certainly very social, and in the past I would’ve said extrovert, no problem. In my theatre days. In my high school days. But now I need big chunks of alone time to recharge, and I can’t tell if it’s a learned condition, worn into me through years of working from home, or if I’ve just leaned closer to something that was always inside me, waiting to be felt.
It’s going to be 85 degrees today. 90 tomorrow. 70 later. We keep getting big winds as the changing temperatures rile up the atmosphere; as we all brace ourselves for summer. When my sister and brother-in-law were here last week I tried to explain that it’s not just the heat that gets to me in June and July, it’s the unrelenting sameness: how the sky above me and the mountains beyond look burned out. Things get blank. The heat so extreme that your mind is blank, along with the landscape.
It would be getting ahead of myself to anticipate the monsoons that eventually break that desolate stretch, but our new roof is on the house, ready to protect us when the rains come.
For now the garden is very green. Hummingbirds bathe in the hose and shade themselves beneath the kale.
Good book things are happening too, and here is a save-the-date for tour stops, which I will soon have a nifty graphic to announce more widely:
- June 6: 7pm at Book Soup in Los Angeles, CA, in conversation with Edan Lepucki
- June 8: 7pm, reading, signing, and book launch party at Antigone Books in Tucson, AZ
- June 11: 7:30pm at Greenlight Books (Fort Greene location) in Brooklyn, NY in conversation with Rachel Fershleiser
- June 14: 7pm reading & signing event at Changing Hands Bookstore (downtown Phoenix location) in Phoenix, AZ
- June 19: 7pm reading & signing event at Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, WA.
I am very excited.