It is hot and humid again, the sun is slamming through the windows. I had to wake up early on my first day of vacation and walk to get my car that I was inappropriately too drunk to drive home last night. I say "early" with a student tongue in cheek - it was 8:30.

So now it is 9:30 on Friday morning and I am sitting on my couch, the dogs laying in the sun that slams through the front door. I have a long list of tasks waiting, but, due to some aforementioned excessive consumption, I don't want to do a thing but go back to sleep. Or maybe let the minutes sit quietly while I drink some coffee and get my feet under me.

Our plans for the week are full of family. My family tonight, John's family tomorrow, some more of my family after that. This is a natural place for us. I can imagine us returning.

That's one of my recurring fantasies: there is an old farmhouse by my dad's place that is my favorite place in the world. It is up on top of the hill, so you can't see the lake, but it looks down the valley and has a pretty nice view. The road curves around the property, so it is almost like an island and it a wide field separates the back of the house from the woods. It's a smaller farmhouse, white with a big wraparound porch. The front yard has some huge trees, and a tire swing hangs from one. Some artists moved in about 10 years ago and saved the place from completely falling apart. It has a huge old barn in the back that they renovated and now is workspace and art studios. They put a pond in the back, and they have gardens all over the place. Sunflowers, sunflowers everywhere. They put in white picket fences and stone fences all over the property, and flowers grow alongside them. They renovated the inside, too, but they didn't alter the architecture. It has wood floors everywhere, and it's small, kind of cottage-like. It has two stories, and big trees grow outside all of the windows.

I think I'm going to have to wait until somebody dies to get that one.