February 1st! Time really is moving forward, though the pandemic can feel so static. What we're doing on this first Monday of the month is waiting for a giant storm: snow, sleet, bluster, and up to 14 inches of accumulation, all supposedly starting during the afternoon commute. Poor Tom will have to drive in it, and poor Paul will have to walk and bus in it, and I will worry about them.

This morning I'll undergo my 8 a.m. exercise class, and then I plan to finish and ship my editing project, and then I'll run out to the grocery store and gas station before the storm, and then I'll come home and clean the bathrooms. Eventually I'll make something for dinner involving leftover pork, leftover rice, and the dry black beans I'm soaking. And if I'm lucky I'll do a bit more revision on the poem that Kathy (my painter collaborator) and I have chosen for the Art in Common Places broadside.

Monday mornings often feel a bit hysterical, as if I'm trying to rev myself up for usefulness: madly scouring the kitchen sink, stuffing towels into the washing machine, generally trying to behave like someone who hasn't spent the weekend playing board games and rereading favorite children's books. But by this time tomorrow, I'll have finished that editing project and I'll be back in the twilight world of semi-employment: waiting for the next thing to show up on my desk, offering advice on a friend's manuscript, filling the gaps with my own writing and reading.

And the snow will be falling.