My Cabinet of Distractions

Here at the end of week three of this hiatus, I'm finally going to call it what it is: a necessary quiet, one I'm not ready to bring to a close yet.  Lots of things are realigning right now, largely in good ways (though there's also been ample sadness in some lives near mine, of late), and at the end of the day I find myself not really wanting to write about it all.  And even when I do feel like writing about it, I end up deciding that I don't want to after all.  Suffice it to say that I have moved (or am in the final stages of moving now) and have been moved, literally and figuratively, and that our newest students arrive en masse in exactly one week, which means that the summer is hurtling on out of here. 

After weeks away from posting, I'm here to deliver two images from that time, to reassure you that I'm still alive, and to say that I'm leaving again (this time for the monastery) and won't be back for a good ten days. 

It's been a hectic, hectic July, even if not as hectic as June was.  It's possible that hectic--outwardly, at least--is going to be the way of the world for quite some time.  

(That's me with the sparkler.)

My excellent friends have returned home from their year in England and are now reunited with their furry multiply nicknamed boy, and everyone is sleeping off the jet lag.