So many things to write about, but so little time to do it in.

The short list: the cornet, the piano, the red-tailed hawk atop the red cedar, the kestrel at the bird feeder, Libby the Lab, Gus the Used Dog, the christmas tree on I-70, the camels in the pasture, the place where the trees stick up out of the water, what your bookcovers should look like, the requirement that the house I buy after winning the lottery should have a view of a body of water. And I-beams.

And that was just the last three minutes.

Shall I go on?

Why the character in my novel-length short story keeps turning into Clint Eastwood, the differences/similarities between writing and diving into a cold pool from the three-meter board, your father on the high board, the role of parents in developing a sense of public shame in their children (Dave Barry: Show up, be yourself), burying a rabbit near Braes Bayou, digging it up to see if it was still dead, intimations of mortality, two men and a green hillside and loss, the differences in the kids, in their choices, in their clothing, but their uniformly porcelain beauty when sleeping.

And there's the blue pool with the yellow horse heads on a very green lawn on the first day of summer vacation after kindergarten, the first tricycle, a Colman, my rosebud, the first bicycle (felt before seen is important there), that other first that should be left unwritten, Honesdale, some problems with the surname Christian, and just why so much does depend on a red wheel barrow, and maybe on semi-colons.

The song on the Don Mc(Mac?)Lean "American Pie" album that I think Owen and I should sing, the importance of performing music, the lack of a sax in my life, my maudlin tastes in tunes, living near a bakery, the green Breyer's ice cream sign in Lansdowne, the smell of licorice blended with the diesel fumes from a bus, arrows with suction cups, summers at Ocean City, NJ, ants and my father and Grace Kelly, summers at the farm, why once in a while John Updike's writing gets a man's reaction to women right, the promise of freshwater coral, how much wood would a woodchuck chuck, she sells seashells, malaga grapes, rhubarb, digging my way to China, the names of streets, and the magic of place names, and why the title The Unbearable Lightness of Being resonates so.

The familiar homes of strangers, houses passed in the night, the enormous shower room, a chicken shack and cousins, the chicken ranch and a cowboy and an Olds 442, the number 39. I could go on, but time's up.

This is not an agenda, these are not promised items. These are fragments of memories that percolate and nag and soothe and remain a part of me. On many of them, I am overmatched, and will remain unable to make sense of them so that anyone else would appreciate them, unlike Jim Ignatowski who so wonderfully explained the beauty of a light fixture in a restroom to Alex. But that was showbiz. And you might have missed that episode.

Nonetheless, I could be here for a while.

In other news from around the world, Josh had his interview with the Georgetown rep last night. He was well prepared, and came out of it feeling he'd performed capably. He can take a break for a week from college prep events, but has a harder task ahead: the swim team coach has insisted that all team members shave their bodies before the upcoming league and state meets. He has asked to borrow my electric razor, thinking that the sideburn tool will handle his hirsute legs. I think not. I've hidden it. His asking to use my razor was just a formality.

Owen performed in a band concert last night at the middle school. I missed it because of class, but a reliable source (Owen) says it went exceedingly well. His mother, of course, wept.