On the side steps between patients in the 2 o’clock sun the white yellow heat is hotter from the drought and that is real, it isn’t close to the sweltering mid-nineties like it was just weeks back but today feels hotter like that bone crunching California sun a line I read once, because the earth here is so crunchy and dry. The day is a crank turning and turning and I am writing it off me like I have to write off caffeine sometimes, the geni that can come out of that clever bean. In my mind I see my mom and I changing sheets in what we call the blue room of her home, we are bantering or more likely debating which I egged her into, something I did a lot because I always thought it was good for me to learn to critically work something out, and it wasn’t until I was truly grown which took well in to my thirties to be able to think of other than me in that dynamic, and she finally then admitted to me how very much she dreaded it, how very much it took out of her. The darkness I held over myself for seeing my continued youthful arrogance. The million different times I imagine she still makes allowances to this day, all the same? There are layers I get to only see by writing words on the screen one is about codependency, one about OCD, one about domestic violence and one divorce, all stacked there, in a row. Someone nearby fires a gun. I am in the country and lately that has been happening a lot out here, private owned conservation forests make up a lot of this land. Hunting season draws near. Venison chili is a best recipe of mine and one I can feel in my belly and still I reckon hard in my guts with firearms in the open space here, in the right out there. I watch the signs of fall ticking closer then retreating, close close by then scamper off. I like that about here. No truth I love so much that this is home. Mom 15 minutes away gram tucked in bed at night in the blue room. In moments my love returns and we are taking at least the baby but probably all four kiddos a bit later for a dusk swim. Mallow still blooms at the forest edge, my daughter rode the amusement park rides for the first time on Monday night the ones that have been there with the same family over one-hundred years. No matter what there is a second season to be had, and there’s still more than a week before that begins. Then I got on my photos to find a pic of the sea from recently for this post but instead randomly land on one from a grey drive to lunch last off-season, when I told my sweetie I will need this pic right here one day, and that is today, to remind me that oh yea, especially the off season, I like that about here, too.