In Alice Munro's story "Royal Beatings," Flo scrubs the kitchen floor while picking a fight with her stepdaughter. "Oh, don't you think you're somebody, says Flo, and a moment later, Who do you think you are?"

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I had a hard time convincing myself to write anything this morning. One day feels much like the next. Every event is no event at all. Why should you be forced to hear about the latkes I fried for dinner? Why should I complain to you about the maple seedlings in my garden beds?

* * *

Of course, as soon as I drafted that paragraph, I rewrote it . . . revised, recast, edited; argued with it; reconsidered its voice and manner, its syntax, its rhetorical moves. A sensation of pointlessness became paint on a page, a material substance.

For me, this is one of the most bizarre things about being a writer. Even when I don't want to write, and don't have anything interesting to share, the act of saying so catapults me into the practice. I didn't particularly feel like talking this morning, but so what? Now I am.

* * *

Spring continues to flirt like a refrigerator. It is the season of winter hats and bright tulips, wood fires and dandelion greens. Tom wears long underwear to work, and my nose turns red when I hang laundry. Yesterday Tom brought home a load of fire bricks and gravel--step one in his fire pit project--and he and Paul lugged them out of the truck together, laughing and talking, their words indistinguishable from where I stood in the kitchen, but I could hear their easy tenor, their good cheer. Evening darkened. I fried potato pancakes. Men's voices lifted and fell as they stacked bricks and bags. And then, when they were done, they clumped into the kitchen, smiling at me: two of the sweetest faces on earth, eager for lamplight and dinner.