The next six weeks are going to be kind of nutty. We had planned for a quiet fall, leaving a bit of time to focus on Bobbledy, get some sleep, catch up on other projects, etc. Instead we’re staring at a busy slate of travel and speaking engagements.

Today I leave for three days Mississippi. Not for Idiots’Books or Bobbledy, but for my other job. I’ll be home on Thursday and in Baltimore on Friday. On Sunday, we leave for three days at Drake University in Iowa, where we will give a lecture, meet with four college classes, teach a high school class, confer with the student editors of a literary journal, and eat various meals with various faculty writers. We’re really excited about the trip, but we will have to take our vitamins if we are going to survive it.

And then comes October, with seven more college visits. But October is still two weeks from now, too impossibly far off to even think about right now.

We’ll do our best to tend to this blog in days to come, but please forgive us if we miss a day or two.

It seems unkind to leave you without some sort of picture.

So here are Alden and Kato, practicing their respective “bikes” in the parking lot behind the barn. Alden came upon the handicap parking spot and offered the following observation: “It’s a kid. On the potty.” To which Kato quickly added his ringing endorsement.

I suppose we see the world through the lens of our own experience. Which is why, looking at what the next week has in store, I’m going to bed.