Thank goodness it's Saturday and I can get a bit of a late start this morning. At 1 a.m. I woke up in a stupid brain panic over nothing so had to come downstairs to the living room couch and try to distract myself for a couple of hours before I could finally succumb. Fortunately Little Chuck, unlike Ruckus, is not an alarm clock with teeth but merely a friendly breakfast suggester. So I was able to pet him into submission while dozing a little longer.

This morning I've got to take steps to deal with groundhog defense. The damage is getting extreme, and I am downhearted. So I'm going to do some transplanting and construct a few barriers from existing materials and hope I can salvage at least a few of my crops.

But in the afternoon T and I plan to embark on an adventure--take a ferry out to Chebeague Island and then walk across the sandbar to uninhabited Little Chebeague and wander the trails and beaches for a few hours while the tide is out, then catch an evening ferry back to the city. This will be Little Chuck's longest experience at home alone, but I think he's ready to try . . . We've got to get him into training before I go back to my Monson schedule.

What else is new? Let me think. I had a lovely lunch yesterday with my friend Rebekah, visiting east from California. I met her via one of my manuscript classes, and since then she's had a chapbook published--the best possible outcome. It was a delight to meet in person after all this time. And the Maine Council for English Language Arts has invited me to be their featured presenter at their annual poetry night, which will take place in March on the night before their convention proper begins. I'll be at Penobscot Theater in Bangor, in front of a big crowd of English teachers from around the state, with 90 minutes on stage to use for a mix of writing prompts, conversation, and a reading. It feels like a big deal, and I'm excited.

And then there's wedding stuff. The event isn't till next Labor Day weekend, but my sister and I have been having an amusing time combing this year's end-of-season online sales together, looking at dresses and shoes, and now we have ordered the exact same pair of shoes for the occasion, which is amusing us greatly. The hunt for comfortable dressy sandals with a little heel that can make aging women feel fancy without killing themselves: it's a challenge, and we are having a fun and silly time together. It's so nice to be frivolous with my sister.

Yesterday I worked on a poem, read Whitman, read Murdoch, and made rigatoni with ground lamb, zucchini, garlic, cream, parmesan, and a ton of basil. I listened to the Yankees lose to the Astros. I cleaned Chuck's litterbox three times. (Oy.) I talked to my canoe boy on the phone and heard all about his thrilling trip through the Dumoine River's whitewater. I beat Tom soundly at cribbage. And August sang its cricket song--a ballad, an elegy, a thin dry voice piping into pale and hazy air.