The week of the ominous and the anxious and perhaps a little silver-lining-ness.

What's creepier than a blimp sneaking up on you? Well, lots of things. But the blimp is such a happy Akron feature for me that I'll forgive the strangeness of it. The first time I saw the blimp (pretty much overhead, on Market Street) I was about ready to roll under a parked car and start praying. Now it's one of my favorite things to see here.

And how is that connected to today's post? Well, because hopefully the anxiety of this week and next week will result in happy progress and useful moving-forward and such. Maybe that's a friendly blimp hanging overhead, not the concrete representation of impending doom.

I thought that right about now I'd be super sad about Ray going to kindergarten. Instead, I'm super freaked out at how much it costs to buy uniforms and school supplies for two kids. I never thought I'd be the mom bringing shitty tissues from Aldi instead of Puffs Plus with cool little school designs, but apparently that's who I've become. And apologies in advance for the generic classroom wipes. I'm sure they'll sanitize just like the fancier kind.

Anyway, this week I caught up, I freaked out, and I wrote poems. I'm happy with what I have been doing, though nothing's finished, and I am forever lamenting the fact that I only get like 20 minutes max to write anything. I thought my childcare woes would soon diminish, but Ray is home for an extra week, causing a radical clash between my return to work and my ability to be at work without a five-year-old. So this is where the "anxious" comes in.

I have absolutely no idea what I am doing with the new poems, but they are a bit more serious than before, and I'm trying to be a little less rhetorical. Huh. We'll see how that works out.

A thrilling night of poetry awaits tomorrow night, as Jason Bredle and Noah Falck visit Akron for The Big Big Mess Reading Series. What's even better is that I have absolutely nothing to do with curating or implementing this series, so I just get to show up and listen and relax.

Perfect weather in Akron today (low 70s, fluffy clouds on blue sky, some creepy clouds mixed in). There was a crazy orange storm-sunset on Tuesday night, but my photos didn't do it justice.

Currently reading Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell. I hope I can keep reading so much once the academic year is back.

As always, there's a skunk outside my bedroom window this late evening. I play a trick with my brain where I tell myself it's the scent of coffee instead. Success: mild to moderate.

Friday: almost here, and I am very ready.