I slept past 6:30 this morning . . . in my new bed. Yes, it's true! For the first time since leaving the woods, I am not sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Last night, when Tom got home from work, we weaseled the finished structure up the narrow cellar stairs, then up the narrow house stairs: he drilled in the slats and then, voila!--a gorgeous frame hand-made from ash milled from our Harmony trees, mattress still plush and new. True, it's not a very large bed. The room is too small even for a queen-size, so we are still sleeping on a full-size, as we always have. We're used to it. Plus, a queen-size frame would not have made it up the basement stairs. This is a 1940s workingman's house, and its small rooms were built for small workingman beds. Only the movie stars slept big.

This weekend I have to focus on deep-cleaning Alcott House: so much sawdust, so much general winter grit. I've also received page proofs for my poetry collection, and I need to spend time checking them for typos and design anomalies. Tom and I have promised ourselves to take a walk by the bay--though probably in town, as the beaches will be windy and raw. I have a hankering to go out for dinner, which we haven't done for weeks. But probably that's not in the cards. Last night we ate ziti with lamb, cherry tomatoes, and basil; a salad of greens and roasted red grapes; and then apple crisp with yogurt. Maybe we'll have chicken tonight, or maybe Arctic char. The freezer is comfortably full of options.

I've been reading the Aeneid (when not falling asleep over it); reading Beryl Bainbridge's novel According to Queeney, an imagining of the relationship between Samuel Johnson and Hester Thrale; reading Flannery O'Connor stories and other people's poems. Yesterday I heard the wonderful news that my friend Ian Ramsey's first poetry collection has been accepted for publication. I've worked with Ian on this collection for more than two years, helping him transform it from a rough stack of unfinished pieces into a coherent whole. I feel all kinds of joy about the news that it's been taken. He's earned it for sure. And I am proud to have been useful.