sheer gratitude

woke up this morning with a mild case of blues.  yeah, i know, boo hoo.  it sucked just the same.  but that is nothing a lot of physical labor can't fix.  i'd been off-line for a few days.  work -- the day job -- being work tends to take a lot of my attention.  at night reading is sometimes all i can manage.

well then so anna and i spent yesterday and today working in the garden.  yesterday we ripped out our front lawn and today we prepped the area for sod to be laid down next saturday.  lots of digging and ripping and pulling out and breaking apart tree roots was the order of the day.  oh, we also replaced our worn out sprinklers.  now my back aches and i'm seeing double from awaking muscles from a too long slumber. 

all that physical work began to work its mojo.  even tho the sun was out and it had been a lovely, unseasonably cool [sorta like a swedish summer], sunny day i started to notice the sunshine.  oh boy!  then around lunchtime anna told me to check the top of the mail box because there was a package waiting for me. 

huh?!  i fetch it and it is from my brother from another mother, steve tills.  inside the envelope is tills' newest chapper from our putative press, hank's orginal loose gravel, post maiden, with a lovely inscription on the flyleaf.  a wonderful surprise from steve and a lovely gift.  when i visited mccrary and son and daughter-in-law a few weeks ago mccrary pressed into my hands several of the latest chappers, including books by a.l. nielsen and j/j hastain, and post maiden, which i've read a couple times now.  tills is an awesome writer with a great satirical streak running in his veins. 

nine bows to steve tills.

and and last week waiting in my mail box was a package from skip fox.  inside the package was fox's latest book, a selected poems, sheer indefinite [unopress, 2012] a very welcome surprise.

nine bows more to skip fox.

and and and the week before last sitting in my mail box was over the transom edited by my other brother and main man, jonathan hayes.  the dude's been publishing his lo-fi print mag for years and his editorial skills have only grown sharper.  works by guy r. beining and alan catlin, glen chesnutt and mel c. thompson, make this iteration of the zine utterly mind-blowing.

rarely does my mail box contain anything more than the odd bill and several catalogs.

my blues lifted -- of course! -- and our evening ended with a long, very yummy, very filling bbq at my mother-in-law's house.

good day.

but man!  i'm seeing double because of my aching, sore back!