This morning James is leaving on the next leg of his East Coast tour. I wish the weather had been more welcoming while he was here. It was too hot to do much of anything besides flop languidly and drink oceans of ice water. But since the next leg of his tour involves helping a friend do some roofing, I guess I'm glad he had the heat with us and not with him. Today is forecast to be about 10 degrees cooler than yesterday, and the rest of the week should be cooler than that, so life for everyone should be a bit more tolerable than it has been.

Today: watering my stressed garden, finishing an editing project, doing some Frost Place stuff, catching up on laundry. We're heading out to Vermont on Friday, so I have various loose ends to tie before we leave. And then next week Paul will be back and forth, here and away, for a few days, before flying west to begin his big road trip. Empty Nest Redux is about to commence, and this will be a strange and unsettled summer as we all figure out how to make the shift.