homes, Houston I

Some people live on boats. With lots of cats. Or on a 19th century schooner they sail to Spain during the sweet summer time and dive off in the deeper indigo waters. Other people live in flats, wafered in a tower of such superimposed wafers. Still others live in museums, where each artefact is mounted on a specific tack and antique guns cross each other over the doorway. I do not want to live in any of these places, even if they feed into certain wants for unattached adventure, cost-effective convenience, and cultural collector's mania/vanity. A cottage in the Sierra Nevadas does have its appeal, but who will chop the firewood on days I am stricken with snowed-in languor? No, I do not know how I shall live, but this much is clear: I would like to build a most marvelous bathtub so that even if I only linger in it once a year, it will be the most heavenly experience. Ideally the kind where I could comfortably duck my head under the water's steaming surface.

I am in Texas, promoting the little pop-up confection and hoping to catch the tail of the Christmas cash cow. The week of exams meant no sleep and erratic eating; recovery is a long way down the road, but I have miles to go before... OK no more lame quotations from over-used poems.