The temperature is supposed to rise into the 40s today; and if I were at home in Harmony, I would be emoting about crocuses and lettuce seedlings. To curb my longings, I have bought a bouquet of yellow tulips and a small basil plant, which is now flopping against a sunny window. I suspect it won't survive for long, but at least I can clip it into salad as it fails.

I have been unwontedly lazy all weekend, so I need to make sure I get outside at some point to walk in this balmy-ish weather. But I also have a stack of books to get through. That's the problem with doing research. The project begins to get bossy.

I did force myself to do some submitting on Friday. Chestnut Ridge has been on hiatus for a while, but I decided to start trying to convince a few editors to look at it. And thus far two out of three have quickly said yes, so that's something.

I'm at the uncomfortable stage of having two poetry mss. ready for submission, and contests are expensive, and choosing which one to submit where is difficult, and my first inclination is to say the hell with it and not submit anything anywhere, which is just dumb. And my second inclination is to tell myself that Chestnut Ridge must be bad because no one has taken it yet so I'll try to forget that it even exists. And that is just dumb too.

In the meantime, I've got who-knows-what on the unwritten-memoir burner, and that stack of books to read. And a spring day calling me.