Not only did the clocks change last night, but it's 44 degrees this morning in the little northern city by the sea--a double upheaval to confuse and confound us in our winter stronghold. Under the streetlights the wet asphalt glitters, and the snow piles look like melting ice cream edged in mud. It's still dark: no birds are singing yet, but I daresay they will be out in force this morning. Last week, during a minor warmup,  a sudden chorus of titmice, house finches, cardinals, nuthatches, chickadees, cedar waxwings, downy woodpeckers flash-mobbed the neighborhood. Today they're likely to give us a full orchestra production.

My new bathing suit arrived in the mail yesterday, and I love it, which is not a declaration one might expect from a 61-year-old very pale-skinned non-swimmer, but it's cute and comfortable and doesn't make me look terrible and has a decent amount of coverage for someone who gets sunburns just by thinking about them. I then spent a chunk of the day digging out summer clothes and trying on various things to see how I might manage my rehearsal clothes/street clothes challenge, given that I do not own even one pair of shorts but spend my northern summers in skirts and dresses. Young Chuck found this dressing-room project fascinating, and his participation means I will be traveling to Florida with a generous smear of black cat fur in my suitcase. But even with his help, I think I've mostly worked out a feasible wardrobe that won't take up much luggage space.

I expect this exposition on outfits is entirely uninteresting to you, but the trip is such a novelty in my life, and Tom is equivalently confounded. For two people who rarely talk about clothes, we are spending an awful lot of time talking about clothes.

Today, however, I plan to stop caring about them. What I want to do is to go for a long walk amid the snowmelt and listen to the bird symphony and snuff up the scents of wet earth. I want to finish reading Trollope's Doctor Thorne and find another fat but not too fat novel to pack for my travels. I want to cook chicken and wild mushroom risotto and read Aurora Leigh and not get into trouble with Tom for making mistakes on my taxes. All of that seems doable, except maybe for the tax part.