Sorry about this late post, but I was up north last night for band practice and just got back to Portland a few minutes ago. Now I'm trying to figure out how to exist inside this last beautiful day before our next deluge. I'm all for rain, but there's been a lot of it lately, and the bulk of it has been cold and raw and un-summery. I hope there will be at least a few southern breezes in this coming batch.

I'm in Portland for the weekend, though I was scheduled to be up in Washington County teaching a class. Unfortunately it didn't end up running, and fortunately I have a weekend to hang out with Tom, and unfortunately I don't get paid, and fortunately I don't have to drive for four hours each way. So I guess you could call that a draw.

This week has been fairly productive, despite all the time I've spent in the car. I finished an essay (which was a long torture), and finished a poem (which sprang from my skull fully formed), and returned an edited ms to its press, and saw my kid dance, and hung out with my in-laws, and looked at some art, and played music with my band, and read about the history of Vietnam, and talked on the phone with my family, and prevented the cat from destroying the couch, and yanked a muscle in my hip doing yoga. So that's something more than nothing. Tomorrow, instead of driving for four hours, I'll go back to the high school class I've been volunteering in. Today, maybe I'll manage to get something else more than nothing done. I hope so. My body is longing to dig in the dirt, but that is not an option. I've got to distract myself from springtime.