Life Since Then

I decided after a long break that I would start up again. Life has been active and fun! We have had some adventures, a brief sojurn to Honolulu for a weekend (paid for last year and down to ‘use it or lose it’ status), my first experience downhill skiing (on the Moose slope out in Bolton Valley), the exchange of the 1994 Toyota Camry for a Ford Escape (4-wheel drive) (a win-win situation – we got a car that will carry us through the Vermont winter with a reduction of panic attacks from sliding and the Camry’s new owner is apparently taking it to the Monadnok Speedway and turning it into a race car – a fitting end and one my dad would have really liked), and all of this, of course, interspersed with The Paperwork of Marriage as a foreigner. I have had my electronic fingerprints taken, and learned that I don’t give good fingerprint, so I have had another set taken, this time with good old fashioned ink. The next step is the examination of my file to make sure I am worthwhile considering as a resident of the United States!

Just now, we are in Santa Fe at the Creativity and Madness conference, and we will zip off later today to Los Angeles, where Lewis will continue to Australia, and I will return to Brattleboro to wait for my appointment. I am not allowed to leave the country until I have temporary papers. I am a little melancholy, thinking thoughts about Lily and Shadow and Mavis and Tony and Sally and Keith and Varun and our favorite Dominican Sister at the retreat outside Warburton, the barramundi meals (a perfect food, according to our friends from the north) the sweat lodge we build every year out of tea tree and the fresh mussels the kids collect from the beach at Boole Poole. I will do my best to astral travel there. Maybe I can find something that smells like eucalyptus and tea tree and kangaroo and light a candle for the success of this journey.

Meanwhile, I have papers to write, projects to finish, photography to organize and my personal trainer certification to study for (I’m getting it to be able to work with people on psychotropic medications who haven’t been in touch with their bodies for a while).  Oh yes, and a film to finish!  Yes, friends, it’s that time.