Sleep returned to me, thank goodness, and this morning I feel so much better. By yesterday noon, the vaccine auras had worn off, so I was merely unrested, not sickish, and with the aid of a large cup of tea I got through my class fine.

And thus, today, I feel ready enough for the drive north and tomorrow's giddy day with high schoolers. I'll probably spend the morning doing house stuff and then leave here in the early afternoon to get myself situated before dark. I'm going straight up to Monson today, as my Wellington friend is sick, so I'll spend the evening clanking around in a borrowed apartment, maybe working on some poems, maybe watching screwball comedies from the 1930s, maybe falling asleep at some ridiculous early hour.

It's chilly outside this morning--22 degrees--and the furnace is chuffing away, the kettle is hissing on the stove, lamplight pours into shadow. I am fond of winter . . . the turn inward, the rituals of warmth. I like the shortening days, how night encroaches, the way houses become islands anchored to the darkness. Blankets and wood fires, oven-warmth, the lace of frost on windows . . . But lest I start to sound like a sentimentalite, a James Whitcomb Riley or some such, emoting over the saccharinized familial past in "Snow-bound," I stake a claim for winter's terrors as well . . . that these comforts are also fear of death, a fight against nature, which would prefer to kill me and start fresh in the spring.