I'm happy to report that yesterday I shoved the last of those three editing projects off my to-do list. I know another big job will show up shortly in my inbox, but that one will be far less time-sensitive: I can spoon it in around the edges of everything else, and there will be a lot of everything else in October. Two Monson, Maine, USA performances, long days of rehearsal at Bowdoin, the Belfast Poetry Festival, the Word Literary Festival, my Monson classes, a morning with Bates students . . . It's a packed month, and I feel squinty and overwhelmed just thinking about it.

But at least I am gradually getting my planning under control. The other big thing I accomplished yesterday was to finish the syllabus for the November Poetry Kitchen class on Grimms' fairy tales. So that is out of my hair, and today I can turn my thoughts to prepping for Tuesday's Monson session and pulling together the workshop I'll be leading in Belfast.

On top of everything else, I'm turning 62 next Wednesday, which also happens to be the first anniversary of Baron's death. I've always been emotional about my birthdays, those formal markers of waning time.  I love life, and I'm never gloomy about adding another year to my ticket. But loss does thicken, and autumn is always elegiac. It can't help itself. And so there's a poignancy to my looming birthday . . . a celebration and a sigh.