Yesterday was fairly productive: I made a big dent in my editing project, had a long, useful work call, went for a walk with my neighbor, then came home and finished up the editing stack. I made tofu and bok choy for dinner, I dreamed I bought a house with drafty windows and concrete floors, and I slept hard. And now it is the next day, and I am awake in a shadowy house.

I'll be working on poem stuff today . . . mostly planning for next week's Monson class, but also reading proofs for a long piece that's supposed to appear on Sunday and maybe, I hope, messing around with some new thoughts. Teresa and I are starting up our reading program again, this time with an anthology of 17th-century English poetry, so I'd like to dip into that today, if I can get the class plans done. I suppose I ought to start taking down Christmas decorations, but maybe I'll wait till the weekend for that. I need to haul trash to the curb and wash sheets and fill the woodbox and scrape out the ashes. I need to think about tomorrow's blog post--my annual retrospective of what it's felt like to be me. (As if I don't do that everyday anyhow.)

I'm still feeling some residual melancholy, but I'm motoring onward. As always, there are decisions to make, paths to consider, situations to like-it-or-lump-it. The earth turns and the sun shines and the wind blows dead leaves into the gutters. I refuse to stop loving these things.