Saturday morning, 45 degrees. We're nowhere near a frost yet, but the tomatoes seem to have stopped ripening on the vines. So this weekend I'll start filling baskets with tomatoes, start tearing out plants. I haven't yet touched the pile of firewood in the driveway, so that's another chore waiting. Although I did edit yesterday morning, I felt too crappy and cold-ridden to exert myself beyond laundry and cooking and blinking over a Jane Austen novel. But today I do feel somewhat better, and I expect I'll return to my mulish ways soon.

Young Charles allowed me to stay in bed till almost 6, and now I am dawdling over my coffee as he digests his breakfast upstairs alongside sleeping Tom. That little cat has been such a sparkle; we are both smitten, despite his pesty ways. I don't know when the gut issues will be fully resolved, but I try to remember that he is young yet, and babies always have wild intestinal excitement even when they're not recovering from giardia and neglect. Next week will be the first big test: Can Chuck manage alone for most of a day while T and I are both away at work? Or will we be mopping up a terrible mess? Stay tuned for the next thrilling episode of "Kitten Innards."

In addition to my outdoor chores, I've got a stack of friends' poems to read, an essay to start outlining, my Whitman class looming, and now this new editing project to wrestle with. I'm trying not to panic: this is normal, it's the freelance way, I've been in this situation a thousand times. Still, I do sometimes wonder what it would be like to just go to work and come home instead of whipping crazily back and forth between spaciousness and hysteria. Someday, maybe, I'll be able to start saying no to the editing projects. Someday, when I'm 90. Sigh.