A meager attempt at beating the Block Monster:

It's summer in Potsdam. I know. Surprising huh? We're all walking around in a winter stupor one day and then the next people are barbecuing and walking around in tshirts and shorts. Potsdam is a college town. Some towns have colleges in them, but aren't college towns. But not here. The median age is low to mid-twenties and the ride of choice is two feet. I love living here.

I'm sitting on a robin's egg blue chair. When the Mother of the House painted a kitchen cabinet this color last spring we all respectively guffawed and threw in our respective opinions. It was painted quickly back to its original red. But when the Mother of the House offered to repaint my childhood desk chair the same color, I had to contain my excitement. But I didn't.

I'm truly excited every time I look at it and especially when I sit on it. You would be too.

Today several of my dear friends are in an eight-hour long exam, the passing of which is required in order for them to graduate. I vacillate in my prayers. At 7am, when they were just emptying their pockets of cell phones and other contraband, I prayed for them to relax. At 9am, when they were an hour into the test, I prayed for clear heads. At 12 noon, I prayed that they would keep their minds off their stomachs and on the impossible equations in front of them. It's now 1pm and I just realized that if I changed my prayers a little bit, like say, pray for them to do horribly, then they wouldn't graduate, would have to stay, and all my selfish prayers would be answered.

But a few other friends and I are making them dinner tonight, so I think that makes up for one silly selfish prayer.

I did say I liked living in a college town, right? I do. I do. But last night when said friends, plus a few more give or take, and I were wandering around Ives Park, I stopped for one second or ten and looked at them. I know that they're all happy to graduate in a few weeks, and I'm proud of them, I am. But sometimes being kept has its low-points, and every May is mine.

They're all packing up, moving on, moving out, getting jobs, or not, moving home or making a new one. I am here still, though, and this is my home. And I'm glad. Really and truly. I'm glad I love where I live. But it's hard to love so many people who don't live here too.

The other night on the phone one of the Makeshift Family admonished me. We'd been playing phone tag for so many weeks, you see (being very vigilant at it, though, none of this calling once a week and pretending that our duty was done. It really was fairly daily.). He said, "We can't let this happen, Lor." And I knew he didn't mean phone-tag or months of not talking followed by a rush to fit the stuff of life into a half-hour. He meant, we can't let time and distance be the undoing of good things. We can savor and reunite and laugh best with those people, but we can't let the middling and meantiming fall.

On Tuesday a good man walked into our office and filled it with good things, namely smiles and compliments and a big sigh. "I wish I had enough time to spend time really visiting with you lovely ladies," he said. "It's okay," I said back, "life is a vapor. We understand that."

That's why I like it here. In Potsdam. At home. It may not look like much to the naked eye. But it is. Meantiming and middling is the stuff of life and I'm not on my way anywhere except heaven. Eternity is written on my heart and I'm, somehow, touching it from this small place.

Somehow.