The neighborhood is wrapped in fog. Anything that can be seen is gauzy and indistinct, and there is no sign that an ocean exists. I am sitting in our grey living room listening to wet car tires and bus sighs and a ticking clock on the mantel and the sound of the cat's claws picking at a window screen. I don't know what we'll be doing today, but I daresay most of it will require lamplight.

I am weary this morning . . . partly because it hurts to sleep on my yoga-injured hip, partly because I am exhausted by Republican malice, partly because being fog-bound is soporific. I have been reading Offshore, a beautiful tiny novel by Penelope Fitzgerald about living in a shabby houseboat in the Thames, and I am imagining I would have slept much better last night if I'd been rocking back and forth on a tidal river. I have always wanted to sleep in a houseboat, and to sleep in a Pullman car, and to sleep in Heidi's loft in the Alps. Do other people also have lifelong fantasies about lovely places to sleep? Or am I the only one?