Notes from the Red Bird House

It's been nearly fifteen years. For some reason, October sticks in my mind. Even though I knew the instant I saw her that my life had changed, that I would never be the same again, I didn't take note of the date. I wish I had. You see, that was the day I experienced what I thought I would never experience. I thought it was the thing of fairy tales and romance novels and complete bullshit. Then I saw her and I knew. Love at first sight happens. It actually happens because it happened to me. I've written around our story many times - some say too many times - so I feel like it's common knowledge. It took months to work up the courage to speak to her, but merely an instant to fall in love with her. I can still see that moment as clearly as if it had just happened last night. There are those who will read this and insist that I am still in love with her. I can assure you, I'm not and I haven't been for quite some time now. That was a tough one for me - the fal...

I think more and more about going home. I don't mean to my house. As in, "I'm going home now". I guess to distinguish, I should use a capital H when speaking of Home versus a little h when speaking of home. The latter being the house where I currently reside. The former... Well, the former is a bit more difficult to define. You see, I've been searching for Home (the one with a capital H... See how I did that?) for the majority of my adult life. I know I've said it before - probably more than once in this blog alone - I grew up in the same house from the age of 3 until my parents divorced when I was 24. I went away to college and one year of grad school, but that house on Wanesta Drive in Poway, California was Home. This is by no means a diatribe against my parents' divorce. I'm good with it; have been for quite some time. They are both happy. My sister is happy. I am happy. I'm merely saying that when my parents divorced and sold my childhood h...

I spent the last week on a farm-cation, a fancy way of saying I helped a friend on her alpaca farm. She billed it as a 'writing with the alpacas vacation' and I bit. What could be better? A week on a scenic farm in Western Washington where the weather promised to be a lot cooler than in central Texas? The decision was easy. I didn't even care that I might have to do some 'farm work' around the writing and researching I planned to focus on. What I didn't count on was Valentina. She was about two and a half weeks old when I met her and three weeks, two days old when I had to say good bye. I knew her a sum total of seven days. That's it. And she completely changed the way I view my life and my survival. Valentina was born with a nasal abnormality that affected ability to breathe and eat. As alpacas breathe almost exclusively through their noses and only use their mouths when agitated or excited, Valentina's prognosis from the beginning wasn't very...