I slept hard last night, to make up for the night before; and while my dreams did not reach the epic proportions of two days ago (mysteriously notated only as "Dogs with special powers"), they did involve both the actor Elliot Gould and the poet BJ Ward looking for secret stuff behind a ventilation system in a weird brick house that apparently belonged to my aunt.

Today, I've got some Frost Place stuff to do, but otherwise the hours are mine. My poetry group really liked the poem draft I shared last night, and I guess that's a sign that I need to get off my duff and use a few of these free hours to submit poems to journals.

So this morning, after exercise class et al., I'll try to buckle down to that chore. I did finish Teresa's copyediting yesterday, and washed a thousand pounds of laundry, and got my teeth cleaned, and reamed out the bathrooms, and vacuumed the floors, so I do not feel guilty about taking a day to mess around with poems and re-start my Dante copying project.

I often imagine how other writers manage their lives. They win fellowships and spend months at retreats and artist colonies. They scribble in the tiny cold hours before dawn. They jot down lines on their palm and smoke a cigarette beside the loading dock. I wonder what those lives are like.