Friday. Darkness. A small chill rain.

I sit at the dining room table with my coffee and you, as Tom slowly wakes up on the couch. He's had a cold for a week, and the cough just won't die, so one or the other of us has been sleeping downstairs every night. For some reason, I remain cold-free, but he needs a weekend and a magic wand, poor man.

He's been clomping off to work every day, tired and sick, and I've been climbing the stairs to work every day, rested and healthy. It's been a sad state of affairs.

But I've made a giant dent in my editing project, written up class plans for next week's Monson session, begun detailed work on the teaching conference syllabus, finished reading Munro's story collection, starting reading Anny Thackeray Ritchie's book about Madame de Sevigne, worked on a poem draft, answered a thousand emails, and walked for miles . . . which is exactly what I hoped my week would be.

I've also done some fancier-than-usual cooking. For a while, I've been meaning to make kabocha squash gnocchi, and last night I finally got around to it. They require a lot of steps (roast the squash, make the dough, shape the gnocchi, boil them, sauté them), but the end results were divine, rolled in salty brown sage butter and served alongside roast chicken and a beet and pumpkin-seed salad. I was very happy with that meal.

So today, on the heels of that beautiful dinner, with the rain drizzling on the window panes, with the cat crunching up chow and Tom sighing and flicking on the light, with the small rooms like islands in the darkness, with my work finished and my work unbegun, with the kettle steaming gently on the stove and my fingers finding their path among the keys, I take a deep breath of this, our life.