Woke up in Monson to 35 degrees. Came home to Portland to 75 degrees. Maine is a crazy place. But it was a great day, filled with theater experiments and modern dance experiments and drawing and writing experiments. The kids were excited and completely engaged, and I loved doing it all too.

Now here I am in my customary couch corner, awake too early because the birds are making such a racket. We're supposed to have another warm day in town, and I will be busy with desk stuff and housework and then my writing salon tonight . . . wallowing in the homey things for a day or two, before I hit the road again on Saturday.

Outside there is cacophony--gulls screeching, cardinals burbling--so much bird shout. I wonder if I'll ever sleep late again.

I've been reading Emma; also, my friend Maureen Thorson's poetry collection Share the Wealth, which is one of my competitors for the Maine Literary Award . . . an excellent book, and so different from mine. Maureen is a surrealist of the natural world, and her book takes such a bracing and sardonic and often very funny approach to seeing. I do enjoy watching another writer do work that I can't do at all. And the contrast with Emma was also bracing; I kept flipping back and forth between Jane's 1812 concerns and Maureen's 2022 concerns, thinking about how these two sharp-eyed women artists were refining their observations into wit and vigor.

It's good to have these sorts of books in my bag.