Last night's dream: Tom let a bear cub into the apartment, and we all got fleas.

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I finally took a photo for you. This is the fireplace and the eye of the little woodstove and some of the living room wall. Ignore the yellow painting tape and the crooked camera placement. The ghostly emanation on the left is entirely friendly. Eventually the baseboard will be pale gray.

I finished my editing project, so today I'll be painting and taping until it's time to take a nap before driving north for band practice. Second coat of blue on the bathroom. Maybe a first coat of gray on the living room trim. Definitely some caulk on the bathroom trim. By the way, "Painting around Plumbing" is a great idea for a yoga class. Talk about crazy positions to hold.

I've decided to read another Le Carre novel: The Perfect Spy. I like that it's encased in that old-fashioned sturdy library covering that's like a plasticized version of a paper bag. It's the kind of book cover that could take a bullet but it's also anonymous. I could be reading Ayn Rand and no one would know.

Yesterday the exhaustion overtook me. I edited, and worked on some submissions, and then I walked into town to run errands, and then I drove to the house to paint, and by the time I arrived I could barely convince myself to do anything. I did put a first coat of white on the fireplace and a second coat of white on the bathroom ceiling. I did measure all of the heat vents for new covers. But that's all I could manage. I crawled home, half asleep, and made a chicken potpie, and folded some laundry, and kept up a conversation with Tom when he finally got home. But the couch vanquished me, and then I sleep-walked from the couch into bed, and then I dreamed all night about an old friend who doesn't like me anymore.

It did not seem restful. Still, this morning I no longer feel like I'm about to fall into a coma in my dinner plate. So I guess all that somnolence did something for me, despite the unpleasant dreams.

Today or tomorrow I should finish up my current editing project, and then I will have a brief hiatus until the next one arrives. The house will suck up my so-called free time, but at least I can do the work in daylight while I'm still sort of fresh. And tomorrow I'll be driving north for band practice, so that will be a bit of a change, though a two-and-a-half-hour drive into darkness is not exactly relaxing.

I did get some poems submitted yesterday, so that's something. I did get some paychecks in the mail, so that's something too. And the creamy white fireplace surround is very visually satisfying. And the chicken pie was good. And my bed has crisp white cotton sheets and a thick white duvet. Small comforts can be the best comforts.

The blood-and-pus-colored living room has been transformed! Though the fireplace surround is still coated with primer and the trim clings to its original filthy white and the ceiling is in the process of being patched, the walls are now a glowing satiny gray. The difference between Infection Delight and Morris Room Gray is very gratifying.

I also made a start on the bathroom, which among other things is hideously dirty and is filled with other people's hair and is generally a gagging job to clean. It, like the kitchen, should be torn out down to the studs, but there's no time for that. So we removed the ugly hardware and I have been washing walls and ceiling, caulking seams, and trying to plug the largest of the cracks and holes. I forget if I told you that some previous owner had filled a window crack with Silly Putty. That's the kind of home maintenance this poor house has endured.

Other peculiar things: someone painted the bathroom ceiling blue. Why did that seem like a good idea? In other rooms I've also found traces of navy blue trim and dark red doors. Maybe this place used to be a haunted house. If so, our ghost must be in a much better mood now.

Yesterday was a busy painting day, which then morphed into a late night out with my sister and our friends. So why am I awake at 6 a.m.?

I had strange dreams involving espionage and a wildcat and, I think, a castle and some circus ropes and a sniper and a bowl of lavender rice. The mood was grim.

Now everything in the apartment is quiet. I am loath to run the coffee grinder in case I wake up another sleeper, but I would really like a cup. Soon I will break down and be noisy.

Daylight, daylight, fingering its way over the flat bay. I could write a book about all this, if I knew how.

In August there were close to fifty sailboats moored outside my window. Now there is only one. The trees that line the prom are nearly bare, and through their branches I can glimpse old Fort Gorges, the square and lonely hulk of the harbor, clinging to its pedestal of granite.

I need a new winter coat.

On Monday the landlord is bringing someone by to look at the doll-house. Our tenure here is nearly done, and that's a fine thing, despite the glories of the view. But I do hope that we'll be able to move into a house that at least has a kitchen sink and refrigeration. Maybe we will.

Last night Tom sat on the couch making calculations about kitchen-cabinet materials. I made beef and beans and cornmeal dumplings and thought about the Le Carre novel I'm reading, which is really more like a series of linked stories about the Sadness of the Spy. It's very autumnal, with gently beautiful prose--not at all like a junk thriller. A good cadge from the free shelf, and way easier to read over lunch than primary-source descriptions of John Brown being hung.

Today: editing, naturally. Also housework in the doll-house, in preparation for my sister's visit tomorrow. Also caulking windows at the Alcott House. We may not have refrigeration, but at least I'm fending off the north wind.

Finally we got a frost last night, and now dogs are walking down the prom with their silly dog coats on, and women are wearing fuzzy hats, and the pompous gulls are nowhere to be seen, and the basil plant on my deck is shriveled and black.

Last night I cooked chicken soup, and Tom quit working at the house slightly early, and we just sat on the couch and did nothing. It was a tiny respite anyway. The exhaustion level is climbing, but he is soldiering on, and I am trying to follow. If nothing else, I have gotten a whole lot more competent with a hammer and a brush.

I did manage to send a couple of poems out to a venue that had requested a submission. I did manage to spend some time with another poet's work. I did manage to revise the description of my forthcoming essay class. But mostly "be a good friend to Tom" feels like the basic goal of my life these days.

Today: more editing, and then I have to go to South Portland to pick up a new lockset at the door-and-window store, and then I have to scrape paint and spackle holes in the Alcott House living room walls, and then I have to shuttle back to the apartment to make dinner and fold laundry.

I have to say that I am looking forward to painting that living room. Currently it has a cracked dirty white ceiling, pockmarked dirty mustardy walls, filthy chipped white trim, and a gruesome red-painted brick fireplace surround. The color combinations are painful: kind of a blood and pus look. But when I'm done with it, we'll have a clean matte white ceiling, medium-gray satin walls, pale-gray semi-gloss trim, and a white-painted fireplace surround. I can't wait to rest my eyes on that improvement.

Some bright spots, dear Democrats! And Maine voted resoundingly to expand our ACA/Medicare coverage--a satisfying thumb of the nose to our Trumpian governor, who had rejected those federal funds for no reason other than spite.

This morning I am the proud owner of a left ear that can hear again, now that the giant ball of wax has been removed from my ear canal. And I have fresh horsehair on my violin bow, and I went for a 4-mile walk with a delightful young person, and I finished a chapter in my editing project, and I made braised chicken with cherry tomatoes and green olives, and I found a book to read . . . one I'd taken off a free shelf a few months ago and then promptly forgot I possessed: a John Le Carre novel called The Secret Pilgrim. Every once in a while, a Cold War spy is just the ticket.

Today I thought I was going north for band practice, but it turns out that I'll be staying in town--painting, of course; editing, of course; but less rushing-around-trying-to-get-basic-stuff-under-control than I'd planned on doing. I've got a stack of poems I probably ought to submit to journals, so maybe I'll try to snatch some time for that. I've got a workshop advertisement to revise. I've got some friends' poems to respond to.

I am feeling a little bit cheerful about politics, though: like I'm now standing two steps up from the cellar-hole of doom.