On editing days, I'm mulish and habituated: desk work in the mornings, other stuff in the afternoons. So whenever that pattern is disrupted, I feel as if I'm getting nothing accomplished, even if I am. Yesterday, a morning dentist appointment threw me entirely off-balance; my Friday-morning yoga class drives me crazy, though I also love it. It's dumb to be so habit-ridden, though I guess it's not so dumb that I've figured out how to get stuff done.

Sometimes I wonder if that's the primary adult goal: learning to finish what you start.

Anyway, enough of this boring talk. Look outside! An edge of sunrise is lifting over the roofs of the houses--pale lavender-grey, the color and sheen of a silk gown that Jane Eyre would refuse to wear.

The clock is ticking in the kitchen; in the distance traffic rumbles over the bridge.

I'd like to write today, but I know I have to work on other people's manuscripts.

But enough of this boring talk. Look outside! The silk gown has vanished, and now the white sky is fingered with slate, and the chimneys point heavenward like characters in a Dickens novel, and the sad leaves on the trees cast invisible shadows, and far away an ambulance wails like the speaking dead.