Friday morning, 6 a.m., 40 degrees outside, furnace grumbling, coffee hot, cat racing wildly around the house.

I'm sleepy, and trying to convince myself to get off the couch and start gathering together the recycling and trash for the curb. Tom is upstairs clonking drawers open and shut. The darkness is still thick, and the dawdling urge is powerful.

Yesterday was another this-n-that day: garden cleanup, a walk with friends, Monson class planning, writing in the evening. I copied out some poems by the Abenaki poet Cheryl Savageau, which I'm going to share with the kids, alongside some Michael Casey pieces, as we spend next Wednesday playing with various approaches to voice. And I worked on my own revision, which is improving but still doesn't thrill me.

I continue to wait for editing work back from an author, so today will be another unfocused day, employment-wise. I might run some errands; I'll keep hacking away at the garden; I'll mess around with my revision and maybe some of the blurts I wrote last night at the salon. I'll read Suite Francaise and endure my exercise class and clean the ashes out of the grate. Maybe I'll send a few more poems out to journals.

This week's loose days were unexpected, but I'm happy to have them, though I don't feel as if I've been especially productive. But what does productive mean, anyhow? I did some things and noticed that I was doing them. Maybe that's productive enough.