I seem to be back to normal this morning, as evidenced by how early I woke up. On a morning when everyone else is wallowing in their extra change-the-clocks hour, I was wide-awake at 4:30, and I can't even blame the cat. So here I am at the kitchen table, in my familiar red bathrobe, with my familiar white cup of delightful black coffee, feeling peppy all by myself.

Yesterday Tom did the first stage of the upstairs-floor sanding. Some idiot homeowner of the past had painted those beautiful fir floors, and then a second idiot painted them again, so the sanding job was slow. But already, even half-done, the difference is glorious.

In the meantime, I finished the dining room touch-ups and removed all the painter's tape, and voila! A sweet little yellow-walled, gray-trimmed, white-closeted room, where someday I will be sitting in my red bathrobe writing to you.

And I also planted my garlic, and finished planting tulips and daffodils and grape hyacinths, and mulched the beds with leaves. And I prepped and taped the back room (aka, room for guests/room for watching TV) for painting. And I did not take any kind of nap at all.

All the while, that poem draft I wrote last week is bubbling in my thoughts, like a secret joy. What a relief and a pleasure it is to be back to my favorite self: dirt-smudged woman with a pocket full of syllables.