Live and sleep-deprived from Colorado, I present … us. Click the photo for a larger version.

Pandora is the little uber-plushy penguin on your left. Phoebe is the larger penguin with the knitted hat and scarf that we liberated from a thrift store earlier this week.

(Peter, the original Disco Penguin, is at home, guarding the cats.)

I wondered where I'd be. I got the answer tonight; an answer that was nearly four years in coming. As usual, the answer wasn't what I expected.

It was less.

It was more.

It became real to me as I watched the power lines swoop from pole to pole. No amount of packing or planning had managed to do so; the days after PHE had flown by in a fever haze that made the date of the trip slip up on me sooner than I could have possibly expected.

"Hey, Brian wants us to meet him for lunch."

(sleepy mumbles of agreement)

"I'm working on 'enthusiastic.' Right now I'm to 'awake.'"

So I guess we'll meet up with Brian after all.

You never know when you're going to fall in love. Well, I wouldn't so much call it 'love' as I would 'deep and abiding lust.'

Adrienne Vittadini. Cristina. Color #4.

There is silence, scented with bergamot, and a cup of tea that more than one friend has told me whose leaves smell "more like a big sweaty guy named Earl than some proper English tea called Earl Grey."

In the past month, the angle of the sun has changed enough that the guest bedroom now sees bright slats of midafternoon light. For the sixth autumn straight, the cats have made it a point to sunbathe and drowse amidst the motes. They doze in tangles of brotherly paws and tails, kitty-snoring into each others' ears amidst the fresh-folded laundry.