Yesterday morning I bought $2,000 worth of kitchen appliances. But of course the store doesn't deliver between Christmas and New Year's, so now we have yet another rock-and-a-hard-place to deal with. We've got to get the floor tiled before the fridge can go in; we've got to move out of the apartment by December 31. Did I mention that I will never, ever, ever again move anywhere at Christmastime? I cannot believe we've done this two years in a row.

In calmer news: I did manage to snag an hour upstairs in my new study. And miracle of miracles, I revised a poem. Gray sunlight filtered through the north-facing windows. I felt as if I were sitting by myself in an artist's studio. The house creaked companionably. When I looked out the window, I saw our two enormous Norway maples, and beyond them the neighbors' back yards, and beyond that a quiet street. I sat in a lawn chair, with a stool beside me as a desk. That was the only furniture in the room. But I had my laptop for writing, and Levine's poems and Mansfield Park for reading. To me, the laptop has always felt like a contemporary version of the Brontes' lap desks, which I have coveted since I was a child--long before the advent of computers. I tuck it under my arm like a book, and then I sit down, and open it, and there I am among my thoughts and papers. It is like using technology to pretend to be a Luddite, but it also feels like a physical link to a particular version of women's lives--those women who, between peeling potatoes and darning socks, managed to pull out their lap desks and find a way to write and write and write.

Today: an oil change for the car, and then back to the house to wash windows and touch up paint. And maybe I'll sit in my lawn chair again, and maybe the words will rise and float again in my little room.