We had an affectionate, if comic Valentine's Day around here. My present to Tom was lobsters, but while I was out and about in the car I thought, Oh, cannoli!, so I stopped at the Italian market and bought a box. Then, when I got home, I had another thought: Ooh, I wonder if that was Tom's idea for a present for me. I texted to ask; he thanked me for picking up my own gift; yes, that's how things go between long-attached couples. We know what we like. Add in a slapstick lobster-eating explosion that required Tom to change his shirt in the middle of dinner, add in me across the table, laughing to split a gut, and you have a good idea about how old people celebrate the day.

It's 7 degrees this morning, but by Thursday the temp is supposed to spring up to 50. February is a strange month in Portland. Freeze, melt, freeze, melt. No wonder our sidewalks are so terrible. Still, yesterday, down by the wharf, on one of the most congested streets in the city, I watched a load of tourists clopping down the middle of the road in a horse-drawn wagon. Clearly, this was a large dose of no-fun for everyone--cars stuck behind the wagon, horse pulling the wagon, tourists and driver freezing inside the wagon. A metaphor for universal suffering, perhaps. The tourist trade as existential novel.

Anyway, I escaped from the horse-induced traffic jam and wended my way off the peninsula and back to my own neighborhood, which may not have horses but does have a large ratty skunk, ready to inject its own version of universal suffering at first opportunity. I watched it scuttling around the back garden yesterday morning. It looked as if it needed a good hair brushing.

As you can see, my writing has fallen down the giddy hole.

So, okay, back to business. Today I'll be finishing up work on a poetry-manuscript consultation, and editing a chapter of an academic manuscript, and working with my high school poet. I'll endure my exercise class, and I ought to vacuum and clean bathrooms, and I'll cook brook trout for dinner, though for some reason I was dreaming about making Italian celery soup. I should probably submit some finished poems to journals. I'd like to transcribe some scrawls out of my notebook and see if they've got potential for new drafts. Not all of this will get done today. But some of it will.