Yesterday's temperatures reached 60 degrees, and I glimpsed the first tulip and scylla leaves poking through the leafmold in the south-facing gardens along the foundation. We still have snow but it is soupy and thinning, and after another overnight in the 40s I can tell that even more has melted away.

T was working on taxes all day but took a break with me for a drive over to the Eastern Prom and a walk along the waterfront, where we watched happy wet dogs roll on the beach and strolled past about a thousand bleary-eyed young parents pushing strollers. Clearly it was "get the baby out of the house" day, and why not? The wind was warm, the puddles were deep, the gulls were skreeking . . . it was the kind of day when the sap is running in the maples and the hounds are lifting their noses into the breeze and the babies are kicking their feet and waving to strangers.

Otherwise, I got done what I needed to get done--mostly finishing my Aurora Leigh homework and magically not (yet) screwing up my part of the taxes. Today I'll be back at my desk cranking out another batch of editing before I hit the road for Wellington and Monson tomorrow afternoon. The press has kindly built the schedule for this project around my travels, but I'm still anxious about losing momentum as I will have zero time to do any manuscript work when I'm in Florida.

So today: edit edit edit, plus a walk, plus a few errands, plus the inevitable laundry and a few more hours of home time before the flurry begins.

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.

This morning, first thing, I had to drive our friends through ice and freezing rain to the bus station--the first leg of an extended journey that will eventually deposit them in Sarasota with us. Weather like this makes it hard to imagine that weather like Florida's really exists, yet in a week I will be sweaty.

For now, though, I am ensconced in my couch corner, nursing a belated cup of coffee and very glad not to be slithering through the glassy streets. Tom is asleep, Young Chuck is happily pencil-pushing a Dixon Ticonderoga into a tight corner behind the woodbox, and hazy first light is peering through bare and icy branches.

This weekend will mostly be devoted to pulling myself together for this ridiculous travel odyssey--north, then south, then north, then more north. So pharmacy, grocery store, laundry, suitcases, books to sell, books to read, presentation, lesson plans, manuscript . . . sun hat, winter hat, sunscreen, sandals, snow boots, reading outfit, work clothes . . . What a jumble.

We've spent months preparing for this Sarasota residency--researching, writing poems and scenarios, compiling possibilities, creating movement, all while trying to keep up with other important things, like our jobs. The project has been time- and thought-consuming, to say the least. Yet we haven't even begun to organize these materials into a coherent script. That's what will happen in Florida, and already the schedule feels tight, though we'll be in the studio full time every day. I know I'm carrying my load writing-wise, but I have little experience with performance design, and I worry about being a dead weight in that regard. I worry about a lot of things--such as dancing in public and remembering where my body is in space. But that's the point of this collaboration: four different artists are coming together to create something they wouldn't otherwise know how to make. I am trying to trust in that.

***

On another note: I've got two spaces left for this summer's Conference on Poetry and Learning at Monson Arts. If you want to hang out with the best colleagues possible, learn how multidisciplinary collaborations can enrich you as a poet and/or a teacher, eat delicious food, swim in a gorgeous lake, sleep in a comfortable bed, and also see whatever the hell we come up with in Sarasota, sign up now! And please do reach out with any questions . . . I would love to see you there.

We got a coating of new snow overnight--not enough to shovel, and no doubt it will melt as soon as the sun comes out, but sloppy for dragging around recycling bins and compost pails this morning. I'll get outside to do those things shortly, but for the moment I am recovering from a dream in which I was seething . . . I don't think I've ever been so angry within a dream before.

The scene was set in what may have been the Harmony house. Certainly the woodstove I remember is the Harmony stove, which two visiting young men decide to disassemble, hiding the parts around the house. When I discover this, I am very upset and tell them they have to put it back together. But of course parts are bent, and nothing will seal right, they are filling the rooms with ash and soot, and as they bumble I become increasingly livid until my anger is nuclear . . . I am transported with fury--

And then I wake up.

So now I am sitting here with my coffee, feeling fury drain from my veins and muscles as one feels hard labor drain away. Pure anger is so physical: the entire body clenches in sympathetic ire. Of course my anger over damage to the woodstove is entirely understandable, whether in dream or real life. In Harmony that stove was life or death. Our daily world revolved around it. So naturally it has entered my subconscious as a vital center. What surprises me more is my sheer hatred of those young men. Mostly my dreams adore young men--as one would expect, given my maternal history. But this pair . . . if looks could kill, I would have blasted them.

And that in itself is an unnerving residue: the lingering sensation of hate.

It's Thursday, my least favorite day of this week, because I have a mammogram scheduled for this morning and I hate mammograms. However, it too shall pass and then I can focus on the more enjoyable elements of the day: fetching my CSA order and going out to write with my friends. Thanks to the Brooklyn blizzard, I haven't attended my writing group for two weeks, and I'll be missing the following two as well when I'm in Florida and Bangor. So tonight's the night, and I'm very much looking forward to it.

Young Charles will be sorry to learn that today is also housework day. His feelings about the vacuum cleaner are similar to my feelings about the mammogram machine. However, spring daylight is lifting everyone's spirits. In these lengthening afternoons he sits in a sun puddle at the open front door, snuffing up the drafts that leak through the crooked storm door and staring enthusiastically at gulls and dog walkers and delivery guys. His pleasure is my pleasure: a happy animal is a joyous sight, and the Big Kitten overflows with cheer. "Hi, Chuck!" shouts Max the mailman through the door; and when Chuck beams and presses his nose against the glass, for a moment I can pretend that the world is not going to hell.

Yesterday T stopped after work to talk to some long-time Harmony acquaintances who've since moved down to southern Maine. They wanted his advice about a carpentry project. Among other things, they hope to put in a second bathroom, which made me laugh because I remember the days when they didn't even have a refrigerator, let alone a bathroom, in the log cabin they'd built themselves from the trees on their land. Ah, the sins we commit, down here in the diaspora . . . Tom and I wallowing in furnace heat, our friends dissatisfied with a single flush toilet.

I was under the impression we were supposed to get an inch or so of snow last night, but from the window it looks as if considerably more fell. Our across-the-street neighbor is outside in shorts and a plaid coat shoveling his driveway in the dark, a vision that metaphorically sums up something or other: fill in the blank yourself. March in the north country can drive even the sanest of us into mad science and despair. So who knows?--wearing shorts while shoveling snow may be a first step toward playing recklessly with lightning and drinking smoky bubbly stuff out of beakers. I wonder if I should warn his family.

Yesterday I sent the poetry ms off to another publisher. Perhaps that was a good idea; perhaps it was a March-hare move; perhaps I should stop fretting and start studying world religions or take up knitting or maybe dabble a little in mad science. This is the season for blaming everything on the weather: the days are getting longer! the snowdrops are budding! the little birds are singing! eight fucking inches of snow fell overnight! [Cue thunderclap and evil laugh here.]

Ah, well. In less silly moments I get a lot of work done. Today I'll fidget with high school plans and the editing project, and possibly even deal with the stacks of books that are overtaking my study. I'm still reading The Pillow Book and Aurora Leigh, and now I've added Trollope's Doctor Thorne to the pile. This morning I'll get onto my mat, and eat oatmeal and fruit for breakfast, and enact the part of a wholesome and discreet citizen, and only Young Chuck will be fooled but he believes anything.

It was frigid yesterday, and this evening an inch or so of snow will fall. But by next week temperatures are supposed to rocket into the 60s--classic March weather hysteria in Maine.

Meanwhile, I'm making progress on my many pre-Florida obligations: turned in an editing sample to the press, printed out my MCELA presentation and gathered poem possibilities for the reading, dealt with conference registration questions. In the afternoon I went for a walk with Betsy, then made Manhattan clam chowder and finished rereading Little Drummer Girl, possibly my favorite Le Carre novel . . . not only one of the best depictions I've seen of 1980s-era western confusions regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but also an incredible foray into the way in which men, even supposedly good guys, manipulate vulnerable women into committing heinous acts.

Today I'll get back to editing, and in the afternoon I've got a zoom meeting with Teresa and Jeannie regarding a linked sonnet project we've been working on. Then I'll roast a chicken and probably somewhere in the interstices start prepping for next week's Monson class. And no doubt I'll fidget a bit more with the new manuscript. At the moment I'm calling it Traveler, and it is making me cry.