I woke up this morning congested and groggy. I do hope I'm not catching something awful as I've been blessedly cold-free all season, despite hanging out with teenagers.

The forecast is for sun and low 40s. I've got a yoga class this morning; at some point I'll go out to the woodpile and move around some firewood. The longer days are doing their work on me: I'm beginning to get the itch to plant and dig, though winter's nowhere close to being over.

Today: the eternal editing stack, of course. I finish one book and the next is waiting. Hurray for steady income, but.

I've started going through my friend's comments on the embryo manuscript, and they're really helpful. I've copied out nine of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus. And I'm almost finished with Pickwick Papers.  It's a young book, of course, and annoyingly packed with shrewish women, but it's also birthing ground for the great comic character sketches that have always made me pray to the angels. For instance: "He was a prim-faced, red-nosed man, with a long, thin countenance, and a semi-rattlesnake sort of eye."

Semi-rattlesnake? I have got to steal that for something. I don't think I can help myself.