I slept like a stunned ox last night, reeling in from our movie-and-late-dinner evening and immediately stumbling up to bed and into unconsciousness. I was not even slightly tipsy; I was just tired tired tired. Car worries have notably messed with my rest over the past few weeks, so a giant sleep was both vital and inevitable, and last night it arrived with a bang.

Now here I sit with my coffee, blinking and groggy. Sunlight fingers the neighbor's roof. Nearby a cardinal warns Jericho, Jericho, oh no, then flits to a distant shrub to repeat himself. A car sighs up the street and around the corner. An airplane grumbles into takeoff. The little northern city by the sea begins to phrase its daytime song.

I spent much of yesterday metaphorically tying up various strings and tatters: dealing with scheduling, paperwork, emails; sussing out project stuff, making lists, clearing now-unnecessary piles of this-and-that. Though nothing I did was especially creative, it felt good to be reentering the word world, even at its most pedestrian level. Holding a book is not the same as reading a book, but it's not nothing either. And arranging my physical, temporal, and thought spaces welcomes the work that will eventually happen there.

Which is a pompous way of saying I cleaned my desk.