The rain is drumming down on Harmony, and I have been awake since 4:30. Yesterday morning we signed house contract number 2 and then immediately stepped back into oh-my-god-soon-we-will-have-nowhere-to-live anxiety. Please, Portland, produce a home for us.

At least Tom will be here tonight and we can be fidgety together.

In the meantime, I will have tea with a friend, and ship a manuscript to an author, and try to solve some Frost Place questions, and wash sheets and towels, and make a pie, and listen to rain and rain and rain.

The woodstove will click and sigh. The cat will wash and complain. The poems of Rilke will lie splayed open on the kitchen table.

Today is my younger son's nineteenth birthday . . . the first we have ever spent apart. At least this year he won't be losing a playoff soccer game to Ellsworth, as he has for two birthdays in a row. Instead, he'll be plotting his Halloween costume. Last I heard, he and his housemates were all planning to dress up as dads: coach dad, lumberjack dad, nerd dad, hippie dad, couch-potato dad. There are many options for a dad posse.