A cool gray morning. Through open windows I hear gulls wail up from the cove, a jay squawk in a nearby bush.

It's Saturday, my first and last quiet weekend for a while. Tom's still asleep, Chuckie is crunching up breakfast, and I am considering the tasks ahead of me--mowing, weeding, groceries, laundry--while also not fussing about them. Rain and thunderstorms are forecast for afternoon and evening. Maybe I'll get nothing done. Maybe I won't care.

This week, in and among all of my catch-up chores, I finished Great Expectations and began reading the essays of Brian Doyle, which I picked up at the Goodwill the other day. His novel Chicago is one of the sweetest books I know, and his essays, too, overflow with sweetness--occasionally to a cloying degree, but mostly not. He came from a big Irish Catholic family; he remained a committed Catholic all his life; he loved and admired his parents and siblings; he was devoted to his wife and children . . . you'd think this would make for dull material, but even contentment can be charming in the hands of a skilled writer. Doyle is often funny about small things, and his best sentences are like old cars with squashy brakes careening down switchback gravel roads. All in all, his essays have been a decent addition to a convalescent week.

On Tuesday I'll be driving over to Mount Desert Island to read with my friend Weslea Sidon at the Bass Harbor Library, 5:30 p.m. I met Weslea at the first-ever poetry workshop I ever attended--when my boys were tiny, and I was terrified to leave them for a weekend, terrified to meet real poets and discover that I had no chance of standing alongside them. Weslea was the balm to all of that terror . . . a real poet, who wrote and spoke with great seriousness and humor, who calmed me and cared about me, who kept reaching out, year after year--not just to me but to Tom and the boys. She and her husband Curtis coaxed us to their cottage by the sea, offered us space and affection. This is where Tom and I still go, spring and fall--to the cottage, to Weslea, who is alone now that Curtis is gone. So it makes me very, very happy to be reading with her this week. It makes me very, very happy to know that I had some part in getting her new collection into print. The book is beautiful, and if you're in the area I hope you'll come hear her read.