The weather outside is frightful--a torrential, whipping rain clattering against doors and windows and roofs. Son Number #2 is supposed to be home tonight, and I'm in hopes that this storm abates before he and his friend embark on their road trip. It is nasty out there . . . an excellent day not to own a dog in need of a walk.

On the morning of my first day of vacation yesterday, I became acquainted with a friendly person at yoga, who turned to out to be Portland's new mayor. That is the kind of a place this city is: you run into the mayor at yoga and the governor at a poetry reading. Friendly and small and arty and female (and provincial, and white, and push-button middle-class progressive, with a suffering underclass, and a giant homeless problem, and overcrowded refugee housing, and coastal climate-change heebie-jeebies, and a slavering horde of selfish, aggressive real estate developers . . . ). But I liked the mayor, who is a real person with real feelings, and I was glad I'd voted for her, and I hope she can maintain her course as she clambers into Portland's various circles of hell.

Today I'll be futzing around with this-and-thats: prepping for son arrival, assembling a set of movable shelves, baking a batch of pita, wrapping a few presents, filling out some Christmas cards . . . all of them solid, non-intellectual, rainy-day activities. Meanwhile, downpour sluices through gutters and drains, the stolid bay whitens under the hammering drops, holiday lights twinkle fitfully through water-glazed panes, the little house blinks and sighs beneath its vinyl siding and asphalt shingles, and far away up north a barred owl shadows a sodden glen of fog and firs that I'll never stare into again.