When we bought our house, the real estate ads, the bank, the county, everyone, had our house listed as built in 1940. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it, but the more I learned about architecture, and styles, and the history of Centralia, the more that date didn’t seem right to me. Our […]

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For six months we’ve been living in a construction zone, confining ourselves to the four rooms in the house done enough to be considered livable—the living room, kitchen, downstairs bathroom, and an adjacent bedroom doubling as an office.
Our unusable space includes the master bedroom and bathroom, my office, the only bedroom downstairs with adequate closet […]

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Every night for three weeks we’ve been up here, on the roof of our house, our bodies embraced by harnesses we clip onto aircraft cable cinched and bracketed and screwed to each end of the ridge beam. For three weeks we’ve been up here, obliterating cedar shingles that date back to the Stone Age, replacing […]

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Hot again. And muggy. Abnormally muggy for how dry it’s been. The weather people have flashed nothing but perfect suns for the last ten days, and nothing but perfect suns for the ten days coming. It’s finally summer. After a near rainless winter put Washington state at less than ten percent of its normal rainfall […]

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On the roof of the carport
ten feet above ground
I quiver and pace
without making a sound.
Below me there sits,
hunched still in the road,
a cat as black
as a midnight rose.
Oh, how I want it
yes, surely I do,
to bark at and play with
and chase around, too.
But the grass looks so far
to get to from here.
Can I jump? Will […]

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