Freezing drizzle this morning; high-wind warning for the afternoon: I like most weather, but this sort just seems mean. Poor T didn't get home till 9:30 last night, so he's already tired, and now he has to wake up and drive in this. Ugh.

After work yesterday he went straight to the gallery and spent the evening installing display panels for his photo collective's giant annual auction. So I had a long day by myself. I shoveled snow, worked on class plans, read Swift, Pope, and Johnson. I mailed Christmas boxes. I made jam-filled cookies and read Virginia Woolf. I lolled by the fire and ate a baked potato and a leftover piece of chicken and watched North by Northwest. I baked an extra potato, just in case nobody bothered to feed Tom at the gallery, and when he came home unfed, I was very happy to produce it, along with more leftover chicken, and set him up with a hot dinner, a couch blanket, and a cold beer. I may not be able to improve the weather, but at least I can coddle.

This morning I am going out to meet a new person, a mandolin player. I'm not exactly nervous, but I am prepared for failure. Not everyone can endure my playing style; traditional bluegrass musicians can be particularly unbending about it. They think I'm too highfalutin. So we'll see what transpires: maybe nothing, but maybe something. I am prepared for anything.

In the interstices I'll work on class plans, finish the Woolf novel, get onto my mat, make minestrone, haul firewood, work on a poem, fold laundry, take a walk if the streets aren't too icy, maybe make another batch of Christmas cookies, return a library book, pick up a few groceries, stare out the window, wince at the news and then try to focus ever harder on my own work, which is what? . . . cooking? being an affectionate partner? messing around with words? In the air they sound thin and unimportant, but they're all I've got.