But when I'm not craving company, I like this window nook. Gorgeous view of fluid green field? Check. Right amount of sun streaming through glass? Check. Books and comfy linen pillows? Double-check.
So finals = over and I'm home. Home and ready to get started on this poetry research thing. I get to read lots and lots of articles and books and websites and compile an annotated bibliography of everything relevant that I find, and write a poem each week to workshop with Dr. Steward, and do minion-research tasks in between for her To Kill a Mockingbird paper. I'm actually super excited. I'm also a nerd.
In preparation for this summer of academic exercise, I've read nothing but cooking and decorating magazines since I've been home. Oh - and the latest World and part of Jane of Lantern Hill for old time's sake. Whenever I need comfort reading, I go to my handy L.M. Montgomery shelf (arranged by color since I was twelve. Somethings should not be changed. Like how I always sit at my dad's left at the dinner table, or how we always pack beach towels in the same weird old rope bag, or how I turn off music and roll down the window every time I come home and start up the mountain). Yesterday I made baked lemon pasta that Jim devoured, and today I made sweet potato coconut muffins and plotted with Mom to steal a hydrangea from the cut-off road.
Oh. And I stumbled upon a place of slaughter in the woods. Let me explain.
On Wednesday, my family reunited at the meat-and-three Olympius, a.k.a. the Pell City Steakhouse, and chatted with our neighbor Mr. Clanton. We were talking about how I don't like walking along the road because of crazy NASCAR wannabe drivers, and he suggested this path off the road. Only Mr. Clanton sort of doesn't move his chin when he talks, so the directions were hard to follow, but I thought I knew where he was talking about. So the next day, I set off down the overgrown dirt path he recommended. Soon I felt eerie. "Soon" being 47 seconds into the trek when I came upon an old exam table. "Gross," I thought, but everyone knows that rednecks have a fascination with things like old dentist's chairs and shopping carts (and yes, I'll go ahead and admit I tried to buy a shopping cart from the Bruno's that closed at Wildwood. They thought I was weird). I went, feeling increasingly more creeped out, but turn around? Why would I turn around in secluded woods where people were obviously up to strange things? I may be in the Honors program, but I'm not that intelligent. When I finally turned around and made my way back to the old exam table, I noticed something that I had not noticed before. An enormous spine. As in, cow-enormous. As in, PEOPLE WERE SLAUGHTERING A COW BACK THERE.
I ran blindly towards the road. And continued my walk, laden with the knowledge that there are cow poachers operating practically in my back yard. Ewwww.
***
And now it is almost 5, and it is a Saturday evening, and that means my mom will be listening to the Prairie Home Companion. Ah yes, there's the snotty NPR announcer now (I do love NPR, sans the condescension). And maybe it will be Billy Collins and Chris Thile or Allison Krauss, and Garrison Keillor will do one of his English major segments. Or maybe it will be weird jazz music and Garrison trying to sing (shudder). But either way it will be comforting because it means I'm home and it's Saturday and my mom is here.
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