It's 10 degrees here this morning, which is nowhere near as cold as it is in Harmony (or at your house, northcountry friends), but still: it's wearisome, and all of February and March loom before us. This weekend is forecast to be a mess of snow and rain and snow and rain, the basement will leak, and the mailbox will fill up with slush, and I will bumble and slide down the sidewalks on my way to buy a chunk of cheddar at Pat's Meat Market, and Jack the neighborhood cat mayor will glower from his upstairs window across the street.

But today, at least for the moment, a sliver of cold sunshine is cutting through the back gardens. Later in the afternoon I'm going to meet a friend for coffee down by the wharves, so I'll get a chance to watch the ferries chug in and out of the terminal and wander among the exhibits at the Harbor Fish Market, and, I hope, buy a pound of squid for dinner tonight. My plan is fried calamari with kumquats, but I will adjust to whatever the catch happens to be.

I did end up starting a draft essay about aprons yesterday. And in the process I suddenly remembered that freighted word apronstrings . . . which is to say: this essay is going in directions I did not expect; which is to say: hurray!