After our busy friendly weekend, my next couple of days will be quiet. Tom goes back to work this morning, and I will have the pleasure of figuring out how to be alone in the house. I've still got one more batch of cookies to bake, and tomorrow (sob) I'll have to drive Chuck to the cat kennel, but mostly I'll be puttering between desk and couch--reading, working on drafts, basking in spaciousness.

Now, upstairs, T chunks his dresser drawers open and closed. The furnace puffs self-confidently through the registers. Chuck races down the steps--bappity, bappity, bappity--and skids around a corner. I am thinking idly of Tennyson, of football scores, of whether to go for a walk this morning or get onto my mat. Last night we shivered beside a bonfire in our friends' backyard, and now the memory of flame glitters in my thoughts and the scent of Tom's toast wafts all over the house.