Dear friends, I OWN A WORKING OVEN. Right on schedule, the repair guy appeared, agreed with my diagnosis, produced the part from his truck ("You're lucky! It's my last one!"), undid some screws, attached some wires, redid the screws, and wished me happy Thanksgiving.

True, the furnace guy who was supposed to give us another estimate never appeared (maybe he's hanging out with the bat guy?), but in the present tense I was indifferent. All my hopes were pinned on the oven guy, and he came through like a champ. May his turkey be tender and his football team emerge victorious.

Thus today, after sacrificing a goat or a grilled-cheese sandwich or whatever to the household gods, I will be baking: two loaves of white bread (one for stuffing, one for turkey sandwiches), a batch of gingersnaps, a gingersnap cookie crust, a diced roasted sweet potato (for tomorrow's apple-sweet potato salad), and baked macaroni and sauce (kept warm to feed our hungry late-arriving young people).

Yesterday morning, after getting the housework done, I slogged through the stores for what I hope is my final holiday shopping. Everywhere parking lots were stuffed to overflow, and the turkey line at Pat's Meat Market stretched out the door. But we were all cheerful, and the turkey I ordered is perfect: a petite 12-pounder that when roasted should be almost as moist as a chicken.

My son is eager to serve as my sous-chef, so I don't want to do too much ahead of time and spoil his fun. But I do plan to get the cranberry mousse pie put together today because it needs to set thoroughly before slicing. I am just so pleased to be cooking . . . in my own kitchen, with my own oven, with our dear ones en route. Stop by for a cup of tea, won't you? I'll be around.

I would be happy to be sleeping better than I am, but I seem to be caught in one of my insomniac cycles. Oh, well. At least I can keep the fire alive in the wood stove while I'm uselessly ticking off mental to-do lists at 3 a.m.

Yesterday Teresa and I discussed Herbert's Mr. Cogito and geared up for our next big reading project, Tennyson's Idyls of the King. I finished reading Gay Talese's 1964 history of the building of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge between Staten Island and Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, which was more interesting than you might think. I read about a third of Lady Mary Wroth's seventeenth-century "A Crown of Sonnets Dedicated to Love." I scribbled notes about the online class Teresa and I will be teaching in January. I worked on an editing project, and I tried to keep the house warm.

Today will be lumpier. This morning I need to clean for company. This afternoon, supposedly, the oven guy will save Thanksgiving, and a furnace guy will offer us yet another gruesome estimate. Or perhaps they will both be like the bat guy and never show up. I spent much time pondering these things while I was making my insomniac checklist. I also, for some reason, cared a lot about remembering to buy milk.

I cooked cranberries yesterday and simmered a big pot of vegetable stock, so that's two holiday tasks crossed off the list. While the turkey roasts, I'll make giblet broth for gravy, but the vegetable stock will go into the stuffing and the collards, and now I have plenty in store. Our dinner will be fairly traditional, as Paul likes it. The one big experiment is a cranberry mousse pie rather than traditional apple or pumpkin. If the oven really does get repaired on Tuesday, I'll bake plain white bread for stuffing and gingersnaps for the cookie crust. If not, store-bought will have to do. It's always my goal to use as few store-bought items as possible, but I'm not doctrinaire and can roll with whatever, as long as it doesn't involve cranberry sauce from a can or marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes, both of which make me shudder.

Despite our household woes, I'm enjoying myself. I do like a feast.

Today I'll work at my desk, do some housework, talk to Teresa about Zbigniew Herbert, go for a walk, maybe go to the grocery store. Tomorrow will feature the big guests-are-coming cleaning event, plus a repair guy cameo. Wednesday ought to be baking all day.

What could go wrong?

Cold Sunday dawn, late November. Night sky softens above a tangle of bare maple limbs. In the living room the wood stove creaks as new flames lick at logs and kindling. Young Chuck, stuffed with bed and breakfast, purrs like a saw. He is delighted to be awake, delighted to feel the first warmth seep from the stove, delighted to lean against my shoulder and admire my ear.

Yesterday I pulled out the last of my salad greens and dill. I was still able to harvest a few bunches of late cilantro and parsley, but there won't be much more of either this season. The kale persists, as do the Thanksgiving herbs--sage, thyme, oregano. For the most part, though, the garden has faded into sleep.

We still have no oven, so I'm struggling to imagine baked turkey, rolls, stuffing, pie. Last night for dinner I steamed, then browned a skillet of diced potatoes and leeks. I stir-fried Chinese cabbage and tossed it with strips of leftover venison. I sliced a ripe pear. I'm trying to open my thoughts to similar Thanksgiving contingencies: sautéed squash, chocolate pudding, turkey fricassee, apple salad. Probably the oven really will be repaired on Tuesday, but recent history makes me wary. I am planning ahead for the road block.

Well, the only important thing is that our young people will be arriving on Wednesday night. With our dear ones in the house, the holiday will be a holiday, no matter what we eat and how many blankets we spread on the beds.

So today I hope to go for a long walk. I hope to cook down cranberries for sauce. I hope to fidget with drafts and read Herbert poems and finish a Drabble novel. I hope to clip Chuck's nails while he's sweetly asleep and put together a Portuguese-style kale soup for dinner. For some reason this post has taken me forever to write, though all of my comments are pedestrian. I know you're tired of hearing me talk about heat and food, but so go my days right now.

Today begins my first non-working/non-traveling weekend since October, and I am enormously pleased to be sitting by the fire with a cup of steaming coffee and not one damn thing on my schedule. I've got vague plans to do a final post-frost garden cleanup--pull out the drooping annual herbs and the dingy lettuce and such--and I need to brush brandy on the loaves of Emily Dickinson's black cake that I baked last week. I might walk to the library and the bookstore. I might buy a baguette. I might do some Thanksgiving-dinner planning. I might work on poem drafts or read Zbigniew Herbert's Mr. Cogito or convince Tom to play Wingspan. Or I might not do any of that. 

This year's November has felt particularly beautiful. I like the sudden starkness of sky and branch, the wild clouds, the way daylight tightens into a brief dizzying knot before twilight drops its curtain. And I love November meals. Last night's dinner was one of the best I've made in a long time: Venison round steak marinated with lime, salt, garden garlic, and garden thyme, seared briefly, than rolled in a white-wine reduction. Local spinach melted into butter and nutmeg. Julienned garden carrots with local red onion and garden dill. Mixed grains (quinoa, millet, buckwheat) steamed with olive oil. It was a magnificent feast--the venison a gift from Steve in Wellington, plus my own garden gleanings and those gorgeous local vegetables from our CSA. The only bit of grocery-store produce in this meal was the lime I used in the marinade.

Poems have been another happiness this week. My intense engagement with the long-poem class seems to have exploded me into the zone. In addition to messing around with that big draft, I have written two new shorter poems that have real potential, and I've got another in my notebook that I hope to fidget with this weekend. One of those new drafts appeared during my high school class on Wednesday--always a sign that something big is brewing for me because I can't often let myself drop into the zone when I'm trying to stay attentive to the kids.

I won't say that our household troubles have exactly helped me out. The money terror is real, and so are frets about pipes freezing and no oven for Thanksgiving. But there is something tonic about figuring out how to deal with adversity, and I happen to have a partner who will jump onto the roof of the train and do what needs to be done before the dynamite reaches the bridge as I lean out through an open window and toss the bag of priceless heirlooms into the culvert. Which is to say: right now we are in especially good moods about each other. And so even though my brain is on the alarm, it is also basking, and that is when the poems want to come alive.

It's a chilly morning outside but the fire is blazing cheerfully and already the house is beginning to warm. Tom has settled on a repair guy who can do our furnace work after Thanksgiving, so there's an end in view, though really we're doing more than okay. But the household gods still have us in their cranky gunsights: yesterday morning the heating element blew in my kitchen oven . . . yes, a dead oven right before the biggest cooking holiday of the year. I started calling appliance repair shops, and one told me they were scheduling into January, which made my stomach lurch. I did eventually find someone who can come on Tuesday to replace the element, so for the moment I don't foresee cutting up the turkey into parts and fricasseeing them on the stovetop. Still, given our black cloud, who knows?

But the quotidian trudges forward and it even whistles a little tune. Yesterday my next editing project arrived, meaning that today I'll be back at my desk beginning to sort through files and figure out my tasks. I got the house cleaned yesterday, so for the moment life feels fairly orderly, despite our ongoing domestic disasters. I went out to write last night and scribbled a draft I might like to look at again. This afternoon I'll zoom with Jeannie and Teresa. Tonight I'll play cribbage with my dear one and sear venison steaks for dinner. My big kitten will chirp and cuddle and chase pencils under the couch.

I'm trying to find an appropriate line of poetry to end this we're-hanging-in-there post, but all I can come up with is Tennyson's "Half a league, half a league, half a league onward." That line is entirely inappropriate to the situation and therefore I will leave you with it.

I got home late yesterday afternoon to a cool but nowhere-near-freezing house--good news, given that the stove hadn't been stoked since 6:30 a.m. and temperatures outside had fluctuated between the 20s and the 40s. Tom and I have both gotten so fond of this doughty little Jotul. How sturdily it saves us.

Still, we need to move forward, and T is close to formally hiring someone who says he'll be able to install a new furnace during the week after Thanksgiving. Now our decision to spend the holiday at home feels ever more prescient: we would not have been able to leave the house to itself so would have wrecked my sister's plans.

But fortunately this trip to Monson will be our only absence before the repair guy arrives, and for the next two weeks I can concentrate on keeping the place warm.

Today I've got to deal with a passel of housework chores, and I need to catch up on reading before I meet with Jeannie and Teresa tomorrow. I might mess around with a little poem I drafted during class yesterday. I need to read my son's grad school application essay. I'll do a bit of grocery shopping. I'll take my walk. I hope to go out to write tonight. It's good to be home.

By the way: Applications to the Conference on Poetry and Learning have been open for little more than a week, and we are already a third full . . . plus, I've had several more people express interest in registering. If you are hoping to attend, you should apply ASAP.