in which there is a long parenthetical featuring bovine metrics

The sad news is, a good friend of ours moved away. Santa Fe will be lucky to have her – though Iris is not so sure. She worries for Theresa’s safety. She’s afraid she will live too close to Alice Nizzy Nazzy, a witch in a book, who lives there too.




The good, or should I say somewhat consoling, news is, Theresa gave us these wonderful iron sculptures to remember her by. Her artist uncle made them. (It always surprises me, the things people will leave behind when they move. When another friend up and left for NYC, he held a house sale and sold everything – including his kitchen equipment [doesn’t he plan to cook in NY?] and all the little, and I mean little, things he’d picked up at yard sales and flea markets over the years. I got a pair of very old wire-rim spectacles that used to hang on his wall and now hang on mine, and a cow tape. It’s like a long measuring tape used at county fairs to measure, you know, cows. Which J promptly broke by “seeing what would happen” if he put it on our ceiling fan and turned it (the fan) on. But I ask you, how hard would it have been to pack up and move a cow tape? It takes up no space and weighs nothing. I guess all those little things add up. I guess once the urge to purge sets in, people are ruthless. I guess as someone who does not intend to move for a long, long time, if ever, I have a different relationship to stuff.)

Anyway. The butterfly is for Iris, who, thanks to lots of artistic friends, already has an impressive art collection for one so young. The bird is for J and me. I love them so. Thank you, Theresa. Good luck out there in Santa Fe. Don’t let Alice Nizzy Nazzy get you.

P.S. Speaking of yard sales, I have something to report on that front too, but that post will have to wait until I can take some pictures.