Tom's parents are visiting for the weekend and we are having a very good time together. Yesterday's weather was sweet and mild, and we started off the morning downtown at the Maine Historical Society, which has an excellent exhibit of Mainers' 19th- and 20th-century clothing. (I also found a book in the gift shop, Dawnland: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing from New England, which includes a number of pieces that I can use with my Monson students as they write about Maine and place and loss.) Then we ambled a few doors down to Flea-for-All, a big vintage market with midcentury used furniture and plenty of small oddities. T found a living room chair he liked, and his parents bought it for us as an early Christmas gift, and I can't wait till we get it home next week to replace one of our horrible worn-out thrift store chairs. It will be thrilling to have a decent seat.

Midday we drove out to the lobster shack in Cape Elizabeth. As we sat outside in the mild sunshine, cracking lobster and sucked up lobster rolls, we had a panoramic view of enormous, crashing waves, leftovers from yesterday's storm. The setting was pretty spectacular. Then we worked off lunch by trudging along the cliff walk in Fort Williams, peering into the remnants of the WWII batteries and staring out to sea at the sailboats struggling against the wild waves.

By late afternoon we wended our way back to the Alcott House, played cards, ate yesterday's leftovers as mussel chowder, and yawned. It was a fresh-sea-air kind of day, and sleep came fast.

Today the three of them will take the ferry over to Peaks Island, and I will stay home and teach a class and meet up with them afterward. I might also try to deal with the giant broken tree branch in the backyard, if I can find the tree saw in the mess inside the shed-under-construction. So far this weekend has been nonstop play, and doing something useful will be a novelty.