I guess it's Washington's Birthday today, but neither T nor I gets the day as a holiday. Soon he will drive off as usual to the house he's renovating, and I'll need to turn my attention to my weekly housework chores and then deal with a pile of teaching prep: high school session, conference prompts, MCELA presentation. Fortunately, however, my head cold is beginning to dissipate. It's not gone by any means, but I am feeling somewhat better this morning. Though I didn't manage to be energetic yesterday, I did accomplish the grocery shopping and I even stopped at a clothing store and bought myself a new pair of jeans . . . not at all my favorite activity, so I was a little bit proud of myself. Also I haven't gotten fatter since the last time I bought jeans. Success!

New York is on the horizon, and I'm trying to pull together some activities for myself. I'd like to go to the Frick and see the Gainsborough exhibit and lay eyes on Rembrandt's Polish Rider. Like the unicorn tapestries at the Cloisters, that painting is one of my touchstones, and I need to visit it now and again. There are a couple of interesting photo exhibits in Chelsea (William Eggleston and Arthur Tress); the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens is donation-only in the winter, so it would be cheap to wander among the orchids in the glass houses. I'd also like to wander among the used books in the Strand. Who knows what of any of this I'll accomplish, but it's good to have ideas.

And I've got poems on my mind. I printed out a stack of finished pieces and I've slowly been relearning them, slowly beginning to imagine them as a conversation among themselves. It's a tentative first step toward a new collection.

 Despite head cold and family chaos, Valentine's Day turned out to be very sweet. First, T and I walked out to the French bakery for croissants. Then we went to a 10 a.m. showing of Casablanca at what my friend Gretchen calls "the Lie-Down Theater"--it's got broad seats with footrests and reclining backs that are silly and also extremely restful. I'm not sure I've ever seen Casablanca on the big screen before, and it was definitely worth it. Usually I don't think of this as my favorite Bogart film: I so love him with Bacall in The Big Sleep and Key Largo that I have generally been content to slot Casablanca into the category of "everyone else's favorite." But really it's a great movie: tight construction, wonderful acting, a complex and interesting Arthur-Lancelot-Guinevere situation. And watching it at 10 a.m. on a recliner was an excellent choice. To top off our good day, we went out to dinner at a friend's house, a long and comfortable evening of wine and chatter followed by an easy 3-minute drive home and an actual night's sleep.

With such relaxations as aid, I feel this morning that I might possibly be winning my argument with the head cold. A little less congestion. A little less groggy self-pitying resignation. Good riddance to both.

So far, all of my big weekend plans to accomplish a lot of complicated reading, etc., have devolved into spending my spare moments sitting under a couch blanket next to a cup of tea and a crossword puzzle. But so goes convalescence. Today I hope to run errands, do some housework, and feel less like a wet mop. Wish me luck.

I'm having a hard time shaking this cold. After starting off as a mere annoyance, it has settled into my sinuses, and now here I am a week later, snuffling and sneezing and feeling like my IQ has dropped 15 points.

But at least it's Saturday morning, and I have no reason to rush around--though the Vermont chaos continues, and I've already taken a 6 a.m. phone call about that. The guilt of distance. It's a particular sort of black cloud.

Nonetheless, despite chaos and sinusitis, it's Valentine's Day, and shortly I'll walk out to buy my Valentine a ham-and-cheese croissant from the French bakery down the street, and tonight we're going out to dinner with friends. The good things are still good.

Over the past couple of days I've been rereading A. S. Byatt's novel The Game, rereading stacks of my own poems, planning various classes and presentations, trying to think ahead, think ahead, think ahead. This time next week I'll be in New York, the Florida residency looms, and then the MCELA event, and in between all of this travel my Monson classes will continue apace. I am nervous about everything.

It's a miracle of sorts: last night I got an email from a press editor telling me that the editing project I was supposed to receive yesterday has been delayed, at least for a day or two and maybe longer. So I woke this morning to the surprise of a small unexpected vacation from hourly labor. I also woke to some distressing, if ongoing, Vermont drama, so miracle must be defined narrowly here. Still, one free breath is better than no free breaths at all.

I'd thought that yesterday would be my only rest day, so I'd crammed it, of course, with unrestful obligations . . . prepping for my MCELA presentation as well as undertaking a giant kitchen project: roasting and straining a big winter squash, then making two pie crusts, blind-baking them, and turning them into pumpkin pies--not an unfamiliar task but a very time consuming one, with lots of dirty dishes and fiddly frets (blind-baking a pie shell can be a little hair-raising). But all went well, and I took one pie to my writing group and left the other in the fridge for us, and I somehow managed to think about poems in the midst of flour and butter and eggs.

Today I do have an afternoon meeting about Monson stuff. But maybe this morning I can allow myself a little more freedom . . . write, cogitate over a collection, read. Or maybe the hours will be swallowed up by other people's chaos. It's hard to know.

In last night's dream, T and I seemed to have acquired a shabby travel-trailer, which was parked at some sort of leafy campground-ish place. We were sitting outside, and Young Chuck was watching us through the screen door, just like he does in real life, and nothing exciting was happening at all--just summertime and three pals hanging out. I'm still basking in the leftover aura . . . it feels so rare to have a purely pleasant dream: nobody worried or embarrassed, no impossible tasks, no dreadful discoveries, no surreal irony. It was kind of my brain to offer me such a restful episode. Among other things, I've been fighting an annoying little cold all week, an illness with extremely minor symptoms that is tailing into convalescent exhaustion because I had zero time to baby it. Yesterday, though, I did allow myself to sag, so I should be feeling better today. And now I have my sweet little dream to help me out.

As of this morning there is no work stacked on my desk. I expect the next editing project to arrive later today or tomorrow, but still that gives me one full day without a time sheet. I need to get started on the giant presentation/reading I'll be doing for the MCELA conference in March. (Unfortunately I've got to prep well ahead of time because I'll be in Florida until just before the event takes place.) But I'm also considering the possibility of starting to print out poems for ordering into a new collection. I'm planning to bake a pie. I'm hoping to do some reading. I want to take a walk. I'll go out to write tonight with the poets.

During that reading at Bowdoin I realized how happy I am about some of my new uncollected pieces. I guess I haven't really been thinking about how much I like the individual poems: I've been distracted by the looming struggle to organize them. So what I would like to do today is quietly remember they exist. 

An inch or so of new snow fell overnight, and I have a morning doctor's appointment so will be outside shoveling and clearing early. But that's fine: if I don't have to drive in it while it's falling, I am delighted to see fresh snow.

The Big Kitten is quite happy to have me home again. He leans against my shoulder and sticks his damp nose into my ear and purrs lustily. And the weather has warmed up a little: it's a balmy 27 out there this morning, a notable change from weeks of low single digits.

This morning, after I get back from my appointment, I'll ship the files of my big editing project to the author . . . and then, very briefly, I will be unemployed. I've got so much prep to do for so many other upcoming jobs that unemployment is more of an idea than a reality. Maybe a better description is I'll have a breather. But a new editing project will show up later this week, this one will be back after the author goes through the files, I've got classes and a presentation to plan, I need to keep working on materials for our Florida residency, plus Baron's memorial reading is on the horizon . . . 

So this afternoon's spare hours probably won't be spare at all. But they likely will involve poems instead of copyediting, which is a version of refreshment. 

I arrived in Wellington at nightfall. The forest was creaking and snapping, the way cold trees do in a high breeze. I could hear the squeak of snow among the branches and the wind booming like the ocean's echo.

All night the wind blew, buffeting walls, twisting chimney smoke into knots. But now, just before daylight, a silence has settled over the little house in the woods.