Today I'll be playing catch-up on the pile of chores I didn't do over the weekend: laundry, dusting, bathrooms, et al. This week I've got to get started on my next work project--a deep edit of a friend's poetry collection--but I may wait till tomorrow, after I've swept up the detritus and idled my brain a bit.

The weekend was rich and generative but also exhausting, as progress always is. I've got two new drafts to fidget with, and I've also got burbling ideas for future retreats. But my eyes are weary, and my concentration is frayed, and a day spent cleaning floors and breaking ice out of the driveway doesn't sound terrible to me.

I'm close to finishing Woolf's The Years, and my plan is to take a dive into Proust next. I've always struggled with him, but maybe this time I'll figure out how to worm my way into his pages. It took me years to love Woolf, and now I can't get enough of her. I keep hoping I'll have a similar epiphany with Proust.

And I've got the eternal Byron to read . . . and I've got those comic books to finish drawing, those Christmas boxes to pack . . . 

Paul's work hours have been cut, for pandemic reasons, so he'll be home three days a week now. We shrink down again into our burrows, sustained by Scrabble games, baking projects, and comic videos of walruses. So grateful for company; so cramped and distracted by never being alone.