It's island weather again. Thick fog drapes the little northern city by the sea; and beneath its blanket, robins shrill, a mockingbird unrolls its patter song. The days were hot in Vermont, but Portland has remained inside a bubble of sea-damp. Even at midday yesterday, as I drove up 295 toward home, white mist was enveloping the town. In this place, the ocean is king.

I got home early enough to wash a pile of laundry, and then T took us out to dinner in South Portland, where we sat in a busy bar beside the misty river and drank Guinness and ate pizza and my travel tension slowly leached away.

And now, after a night in my own bed, I am sitting in my couch corner contemplating a weekend of catch-up chores and comfortable fidgeting and going nowhere.

The garden is sodden, the peonies smashed by rain, but that is always their fate. It's too wet to do much of anything out there, which is fine: I've got plenty of house things to keep me occupied. Meanwhile, in The Brontes, Charlotte has just expired from the complications of pregnancy, after nine months of happy marriage. While watching Peter Gunn episodes last night, Tom and I invented a genre we call Dr. Seuss noir, with sentences such as "Ed is dead. 'Ed is dead in bed,' Fred said." Ruckus and his best friend Jack are currently yowling at each other across a wet street. I am planning to pour a second cup of coffee.

Slow times around here, I am pleased to report. But, still, the sad rolls in like the fog.