A cold, dark Monday morning, and another busy week looming. Already I've put away clean dishes, made coffee, tidied the downstairs rooms. As soon as I finish this note to you, I'll take down yesterday's laundry from the cellar lines and start today's laundry in the machine. I'll make the bed and scour the sink and wash breakfast dishes and wipe down kitchen surfaces and sweep the kitchen floor and empty the recycling bin. Then at 8 I'll do my abs class. Then I'll take a shower, put in another batch of laundry, and get to work on my editing project.

I'm listing these morning chores as a reminder to myself that housework is indeed real work. In that entire list of morning jobs, only three are non-house-related: writing this note to you, exercising, and editing. And none of those house jobs are frivolous. All involve basic cleanliness; it's not like I'm floor waxing or curtain starching every morning before I "start work."

And I live in a house without little children! And my son does his own laundry and helps with the midday dishes and the vacuuming. And Tom washes the dinner dishes every night.

My point here is: . . . well, I don't know what my point is. Just, housework is real work, and I work for love, and every once in a while I think I should acknowledge that.

* * *

The three of us went for two windy, cold walks this weekend, one with our dear homeland friend Lucy. And I had a zoom cocktail hour with another dear friend, the poet Meg Kearney, which was extremely sweet. And sadly Paul's football team lost their game, but that was to be expected. And I read a chunk of Lonesome Dove and worked on my seed order and cooked steaks for dinner and did not write any poems at all.

Today I'll need to move forward with my poet-painter collaboration: at least suggesting some possibilities for poems that we could use for the broadside. And I'd like to get started on my Millay reading. But mostly I ought to edit.