I slept late this morning--past 6:30 and into the dawn, with cold pink light streaking the sky and the cat, for some reason, not biting me. Then I got up, came downstairs, tossed the pet outside, solved the byzantine thermostat-setting problem, washed boot tracks off the kitchen floor, made coffee, emptied the dishwasher, folded the couch blanket, turned on the Christmas lights, read a little news, and now I am feeling dull and suburban and thinking about the old days of livestock-water-hauling-in-subzero temperatures and stoking-woodstove-fires-in-frigid-houses and doing-it-all-while-carrying-an-infant-strapped-to-my-chest-and-snatching-an-adventurous-toddler-out-of-various-life-threatening-situations, and I'm wondering how things became so passive.

Anyway, here I am. A middle-aged town dweller, with grown children and a furnace. Reading Dante and a biography of Mary Queen of Scots. Sleeping in a white bed in a blue bedroom. Listening to the clock tick.

Last night the three of us drank some beer at a local bar and watched half of a football game, then went downtown to the ferry terminal and zig-zagged our way up through the Old Port looking at the city's various fancy holiday light arrangements (Portland takes an arty-Seuss-like approach to lighting design), then ate pizza in Longfellow Square (where statue Longfellow is wrapped in a special red scarf for the season because nothing says "Merry Christmas" like a warm poet), and then came home and fell into a pleasant doze in front of our small, purely decorative suburban wood fire.

I should probably stop kicking myself for being comfortable.