I thought I might get the chance to sleep in a bit this morning, but no. My internal alarm went off, my cat alarm went off, and here I am, upright and awake and listening to the washing machine churn.

Today Teresa and I are leading an all-day zoom reunion for 2023 teaching conference participants, where we'll be focusing on the notion of chance encounters as a prompt for new writing. I'll tell you more about the concept tomorrow so as not to spoil the surprise for any participants who might be reading this blog. But I will say that we had a lot of fun putting it together, and I hope it turns out to be as entertaining as we hope.

Yesterday was a day of walking--not a bad thing before a day of zoom-chair. First, after breakfast, I walked to Gretchen's house to drink magnificent coffee and start planning our June class together, which will be an amalgam of improvisational theater and improvisational poems. It's always so fun to work with a teaching artist who focuses on a different art form from my own. Plus, Gretchen is 100 percent lovable.

Then I slammed out some housework and a bit of editing before I went on a long walk with my neighbor, also very enjoyable, as she's a sharp-eyed lawyer and I always learn something I never knew before and she has the fun of laughing at me when I get overheated about stupid men and Taylor Swift.

The temperature was 40 degrees, I glimpsed snowdrops in a nearby yard, and then I came home and made borscht and Ethiopian injera and a big salad, the sort of meal that feels like I'm actively saving my life. As I eat, I can feel the nourishment spreading through my body: the sweet-sour heat of the beet soup, the dark moist circles of bread, the kiss of olive oil and greens. Surely, a bowl of borscht solves all ills.

So I'll pause here, in my couch corner, for a few moments this morning, and remember the goodness of food, the goodness of walking, the goodness of easy chatter--oh, these sturdy joys of the earth. And then I'll heave myself into action: a shower, a quick stroll around the block, a load of laundry, a dish of oatmeal; papers gathered, thoughts realigned; then the dive into my workday, poems and poems and poems, with leftover borscht to look forward to at lunch.