Suddenly autumn feels very close. Outside it's only 55 degrees, and the air is very still and dry and crisp, a relief and a surprise after a week or more of high humidity and Canadian smoke.

Little Chuck woke me at 5 a.m. by chasing his tail all over the bed. The good news is that he wasn't doing this at 2 a.m., which, in kitten land, is a highly respectable time to be busy. To our benefit, Little Chuck is an excellent sleeper, with a more or less human clock. I do wish he wouldn't start his night by stuffing his entire body directly under my chin, but he does eventually move, and usually I wake up to find him coiled between our backs, like he's a hockey referee breaking up a fight.

Now he's sitting happily in an open window keeping a sharp eye out for groundhogs, and I am enjoying a vacation from trying to type while he's also trying to type. Upstairs T is sleeping blissfully through his weekday alarm time, and now Little Chuck pat-pat-pats down the stairs and I hear the crunch of chow between his tiny sharp teeth. Saturday is off to a fine start for all.

Today I'll probably work outside--do some weeding and mowing, harvest garlic, plant fall spinach--and I'd like to mess around with a poem, and I should get started on the Whitman reading I'm doing with Teresa, and I wonder what I'll be making for dinner. This weekend there's a big music festival happening down along Back Cove, and I suspect traffic will be snarled and all day the aether will resonate with unidentifiable bass lines.

Little Chuck, who has wedged himself against my laptop and is now staring enthusiastically into my face, is confident that the day will be great. He is a thorough optimist, is Little Chuck. Considering that he spent his first weeks of life in dreadful hoarding conditions, and that he's still a skinny up-and-comer after that rough start, his daily delight in the world is touching in the extreme.