This morning, the temperature was 10 degrees above zero, and yesterday when I was driving around I did glimpse a few sap buckets hanging from the sugar maples. So it's possible, just barely possible, that the weather may be shifting toward spring.

Last night a dear friend came to dinner and we drank red wine and ate braised pork chops and mashed potatoes and ice cream with raspberries and chattered and laughed. And this morning I did not have to get up at 5:30 a.m. to fork the schoolboy out of bed because the schoolboy is in a motel room in Millinocket with a horde of giggling thespians, anticipating his one-act-festival debut as a dapper but villainous Victorian doctor. And Ruckus slept in. And Anna the elderly poodle did not have a mistake on the floor. And the fire in the woodstove was still burning.

So what shall I do with myself today? I'll try not to look at the hideous icy gray crust that is my driveway. I'll breathe the "mild" air. Imagine grass. Listen to the mutter of snowmobiles on the other side of the stream.

Just now, from my seat here at the kitchen table, I heard a pileated woodpecker screeching romantically among the pines. Apparently, he is willing to assume that spring is coming. I suppose I will attempt to suspend my disbelief.