First thing this morning, Tom and I got up and hauled 50 bales of hay from the other side of town to our barn. It used to be that haying took us all summer, and then it took all week, and then it took all day. Now, with just one old goat to our name, it takes an hour. Still, I keep my hand in the farm business, barely. Before 8 a.m. I managed to fill my nose with seed dust and my boots with grass stems. I scratched up my forearms and tore a bigger hole in the knee of my jeans. I jounced on the front seat of a pitching, wobbling hay truck with the one I love.

And then he swept out his truck, took a shower, donned a nice-boy shirt, and drove off to an art opening.

I, on the other hand, ate chips for breakfast. For as Sir Edmund Spenser has remarked, "More sweet than nectar, or ambrosial meat, / Seemed every bit which thenceforth I did eat."