man and woman on a star stream/in the middle of a snow dream

Spring break ending, woke up to snow, bustled off to Spokane, me and Katie Dearest singing Stevie Nicks and driving through the Palouse hills with the blue-poppy sky reflected in puddles, dropped her off at the airport.

Didn't get lost in Spokane as I went over the river to a great little shop filled with dinosaur bones and gemstones. Didn't get lost as I drove back to the highway. Took east instead of west* and quickly decided this was a bad move. Trying to find my way west I stopped for lunch and opened up Persuasion.

Oh, I am so glad to be reading Jane Austen again. The more I read her the more I love her. But I wish I were beside the ocean where I could properly read Persuasion, which is set in Lyme Regis of Lyme Bay as well as Bath (Bath makes me think of oceans even if it's not beside one). Remember riding bikes to Fairhaven and the Salish Sea when the sky was clear and the flowers were blooming?

Remember the first time reading Persuasion? When Katie and I went on ocean-arboretum adventures?

Drove back to Moscow and everything in the world seemed good. And getting home and making tea of rooibos, lavender, peppermint, and apricot-tinged Mad Hatter. And sitting on the sunny patio.

And somewhere along the way I lost my momentum. Too much thinking about jade and rose quartz and moonstone. Too much quiche. Too much empty house after an entire week of ever-present Katie, like the good ol' days. Not enough reading of Persuasion. And now the sky's a funny color, gray and yellow.

I think I'll do some shiva nata with Rhiannon.

P.S. If you don't like the inconsistent verb tenses in this post, too bad.


*Technically, both east and west can get me back to Moscow from Spokane, but I prefer west.