Harmony has retreated into the polar doldrums, which means another week of not being able to throw Ruckus out on his ear every time he does something awful. Tom said, "I can't believe you check the weather to see if it's too cold to throw the cat out," and I replied defensively, "I check it for more than that--like, for instance, there's the question of 'Can I take a shower before I go outside to deal with firewood, or will my slightly damp hair freeze to my skull?'" For his part, Tom is in a much better mood about the vortex now that he's finished building an open pole barn in a middle of a windswept pasture and is cozily renovating someone's spare room.

I've been rereading Virginia Woolf's The Waves, though I'm not very far into it because I've suddenly dipped into periodical reading. I can go for months without ever looking at a magazine, but something triggered me to catch up on New York Reviews, so I've been perusing articles about Jimi Hendrix, Margaret Drabble, and Twelfth Night, and here are my capsule reactions. The Jimi Hendrix review prompted me to Google photos of all his girlfriends, the Margaret Drabble review made me grumpy because no one had invited me to write a Margaret Drabble review, and the Twelfth Night review made me long to see the Shakespeare's Globe version of Twelfth Night, currently at the Belasco Theatre. If you live in NYC, please, please go see it so you can tell me how wonderful it was. It's been a long time since I've been so stricken with desire to see a play.