I guess I'll have to embrace my wide-awake-at-4:30-a.m. issues, as clearly it's going to take me a while to adjust to this time change. Apparently other people's bodies allow them to wallow for that extra stolen hour, but mine does not. So I am greeting a very early Monday morning, here in my couch corner, and hoping that I won't start collapsing into a nap at noon.

I did get that black cake made yesterday, and a batch of bread, and a quart of preserved lemons; and I dusted and vacuumed and washed floors and cleaned bathrooms; and then I spent the afternoon under a couch blanket dozing through an extremely boring football game between teams I don't care about. It was a fine way to punctuate a frenetic weekend, and maybe the football coma will take the edge off this too-early morning.

And now the week looms. I have only four mss left to read for the poetry contest. I'm prepped and ready for the Homer class, and my amended poetry manuscript is with the publisher. The editing stack is still massive, but I'm seeing some light. I've started rereading Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace, one of the best novels ever written about housework, and I'm thinking about how to use my dream notebook as a source for self-writing prompts. I've figured out how to tenderize raw kale as a sandwich and salad green so that I can postpone the dreaded moment when I have to start buying store lettuce again. There are still piles of chores I can't seem to get done (scrubbing the refrigerator, washing windows, reorganizing basement shelves, switching out winter and summer clothes in my drawers), but at least the wood is lugged and Tom's work clothes are clean, and I have Margaret Atwood to help me muse dryly about my raw red knuckles and the alluring scent of ironed cotton.