Friends,

When we moved into the house, we met our very old neighbors, Dave and Richard across the street, Helen on the left, and Dan on the right. Dan is the old man who cannot hear very well at all and who did not object when I asked him if it was all right with him whether I practiced drumming (...living near old people has its perks). He has nine sons—YES, NINE SONS—the youngest of whom is in his upper fifties. This makes Dan very very old, or very horny when he was very young, or both. He and his wife, whom I have never seen (--she deserves a good long rest, having popped out and raised nine boys), live in the house to the right of us. Dan and his sons are always out in their front yard, which shares a patch of grass with our front yard. They are in the driveway, looking at cars, or talking about springs and nuts and bolts. It is very King of the Hill meets Golden Girls. Even his sons get their social security checks. Weird.

Anyway, when we moved in, we didn't have the proper supplies to keep everything in our yard looking sharp. We hadn't bought a rake, or a lawnmower, or a hose, or any of that stuff because, when we were in California and renting, other people did that kind of thing for us. And, having just spent every dime we had on a house, we weren't about to buy any of that froo froo stuff. We had enough for food. Sometimes.

Which made life for Dan very hard. Mind you, we bought the house in October, just when autumn really gets going, and we didn't have a rake. So, every now and then, I would see Dan out there (Dan who is in his mid-nineties), wearing a cap and gloves, and, because we share a lawn, he'd be raking, bending over, standing up, carrying leaves, MY LEAVES, to the trash can. Remember, he is in his mid-nineties. When he was born, there had only been one president named Roosevelt. When he was born, women couldn't vote. When he was born, no one had ever said World War, or heard of T.S. Eliot. And he was raking MY lawn. I couldn't bear to watch, nor could I really offer to help--I didn’t want to point out the obvious, to tell him how old he is, to tell him that if you can remember Bob Hope's entire career, or thinking that rock n roll is the devil's music, you shouldn't be raking my leaves. So I hid in the closet until it was over.

Then, on alternating Saturdays, there he was, a man who was middle-aged in the 1950s, who retired in the 1970s--THAT'S THIRTY YEARS AGO!--mowing my lawn.

Sometimes, though, his sons would do it instead, which didn't make me feel much better, because they, too, are old and saggy.

I began to wonder if maybe I was Satan.

Then, finally, when winter came, it stopped (thankfully...I couldn't bear to watch any longer)—because you don't have to mow your lawn when there's snow, plus, there are no more leaves to rake—and I vowed, come spring, never to let it happen again. So, a couple of weeks ago, feeling the weight of Original Sin upon me and the desire to make things right, Alli and I bought several things to take care of our house with: a mower, a hose, a rake, some brooms, and several shovels.

Now, I have mowed my lawn twice (and Dan's lawn, too), and scared the sh*t out of several bushes in our yard. And let me tell you, there is nothing like a hard Saturday out there, pushing, sweating, wiping my forehead; and there is nothing quite like the smell of just-cut grass. But, as I was reminded this morning, we also have dogs. So, I also learned that there is nothing—AND I MEAN NOTHING—quite like the smell of dogsh*t in your just-cut grass, in your mower blades, all over the wheels of the mower, on your T-shirt after you try cleaning it up, cursing all morning and almost puking, puking, puking at that oh-so-unique smell. God, when punishing Adam for eating that fruit, "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life," well, He really knew that He was in for a good laugh. It's a joke, I'm sure, that never gets old. That Yahweh is freaking hilarious. Generations go by, and there's always somebody with dogsh*t in their mower, gagging at the smell. If I had an ant farm, I'd try to rig it so they had lawns to mow, and dogs to sh*t on them, just so I could watch it happen, and laugh and laugh and laugh.

Good one, God.

So: School is over for the year. Alli and I are about to settle into our "summer break," which, in this case, is four months long. That feels pretty good to think about. Right now, I am in a coffee shop, being pretentious and writer-y. I am writing this email with a white chocolate mocha next to me. I disgust myself. I am supposed to be starting this novel. Do you know how embarrassing that is to say out loud? "Yes, well," he said, and suddenly, he had a British accent, "ACTUALLY, I have begun work on a NOVEL." And I’m in a coffee shop, "working" on it. Am I totally gross or what?

Alli and I have been hard at work on our yard, in the front of our house. A few weeks ago, we hung a porch swing which, on the first try, I really effed up. We’ll be hiring a handy man soon, to fix the stuff that fell from our porch overhang, after our porch swing fell from it first. I quickly, and the hard way, learned the meaning of the word "stud finder." And Alli has been planting flowers, and I removed a couple of bushes, and we planted a tree, and really we are very agrarian now, in harmony with nature, singing songs of ourselves with Walt Whitman. We have been pulling weeds and planting green things. Nothing has died yet. The dogs keep lifting their legs everywhere in the new garden, which makes us think that they like it, because, in dog culture, when you pee on something it means you want to keep it. We are pros. However, Alli did break out with poison ivy last night. This shows that we are still from California, and we do not know sh*t about sh*t. Apparently, she was pulling it with her bare hands, wiping the sweat from her forehead…then, later, after her shower, she was covered in bumps.

Last week, though, when we began really to get into our yard, I had a lot of deadlines, papers and things that had to be turned in. Last week was a very difficult week, so I couldn’t help as much with the yard. But, every now and then, while I took short breaks away from the computer, I looked out my second-story window, down on the front yard where Alli was working, or playing with the dogs, or watering the plants, or talking to Richard or Helen or Dan, and Alli did not know I was watching. And I will tell you, she is probably the most beautiful of God’s creation, the most lovely, the most perfect. I watch my wife in secret, from my high window looking down, and she is as lovely as the morning, dirt in her hands while she kisses the dog, and she places the flowers just so in their space, and she loves them with water, and she stands over them and she looks proud. This is my wife, this is the woman I married, the one who would have me and love me back, and follow me to Pittsburgh, the one who left an entire world behind in California, the one who loves plants and sunshine and water and watching the dogs wrestle, this woman in our front yard in the sun who is laughing.

We love and miss you very much,

Carlos