Ok, let's see... I just moved to Flat Rock, NC, which is seriously one of the best places ever. I LOVE it. I live in this little cottage that used to be used for vacation rentals but went out of business and have been sitting empty for years. So we are trying to bring life back into them and in return get to live here for free. There are lots of spiders in my bed all the time and sometimes late at night I am convinced that Sephira is going to get bit by a black widow or that the scary mystery monster that lives in the woods outside our bedroom window will come in and eat us... I have too big an imagination to be allowed to live alone (it's not the dying that's scares me... it's the fearful process of being killed?). Anyway, my sister bought me a foghorn the other day and it makes me feel a little better although I'm not really sure who would hear it. At the very least it could cause the monster to go deaf.

Our house is about two minutes from Carl Sandburg's house (the poet... if you don't know him look him up), which sits on some 200 amazing acres. Lately I have been taking Sephira over there to walk in the evening and I pretend we are living a hundred years ago. It is my Breakfast at Tiffany's in the country. There's this perfect space of time right after the sun sets and the air starts to cool and this foggy steamy stuff comes up off the lake. His house is this big white thing that sits perfectly on top of this hill that thankfully they don't mow and so all this big tall grass just ripples from the edge of the water to the top of the hill. Like I said... magical. And they have goats, which Sephira loves and this big fat cat named Tiger that comes and sits on the bench outside the barn and let's Sephira pull his tail. And this adorable little garden. Of course, Carl Sandburg is dead but the state pays these people to do a really good job at making things look like he might pop back in at any moment. If he did I'm sure we would be friends.

It's funny that you compare your life to a James Bond movie... I think my life is much like Sex & the City minus the sex or the city (or the expensive shoes and glamorous dresses, make-up, hot guys, big apartments, night clubs and oh yeah, the friends).

The thing about this place is that it's everything I dreamed of having when I "settled down". It's in the mountains and there's room to lay roots and I'm only 1.2 hr from this artsy smallish but growing city. The only thing is I'm missing all the other essentials pieces to "settling". It's really hard to meet people here because it's so small and even if it weren't I'm still jumping that hurtle of leaving Sephira. It's just a strange and foreign space for me... to be so very socially isolated. I've watched more tv these last 10 months than I have my entire life combined. But alas I think I have finally decided to return to school this fall and I think we will move to Asheville for the duration. I'm not down for the 1/2 hr commute. All these decisions.

I have a feeling this letter might be a bit rambling and disconnected. I've had to get up about 20 times now to distract S. It seems the longer she's alive the shorter her attention span grows. Right now she's clawing at the screen door and crying for me to take her outside. For some reason she thinks I am her ride everywhere. She danced for the first time this morning. It was the coolest thing. It's funny how the human body just instinctively reacts to music. That or she was imitating her weird mommy.