The bathrooms are clean, the floors are washed, the sheets are changed. Ugh, housework, the never-ending chore. But anyway I'm caught up for the moment, till next Monday anyway. Which means that today is desk- and yardwork day. On Thursday afternoon I'll be teaching a class for my friend Holly at a high school in Jersey City, so I need to keep prepping for that, and I hope to finish a batch of editing today as well. I should pull out the trimmer and deal with the straggly crabgrass; I should deadhead flowers. I ought to pack, and I should make a don't-forget list for Tom who will be holding my fort till Friday, and I need to figure out where I can store my suitcase temporarily while I'm cruising around Manhattan tomorrow afternoon. I have to learn how to get to the Morgan Library from Grand Central Station and estimate when I might arrive so I can meet Jeannie at the door. I need to remember to text Steve so we can converge in Brooklyn later in the afternoon. And no doubt I'll be peppered with texts all day from my son Paul, who is one of those mysterious kids who appears to love to hang out with his parents. Where are you? Where are you going? Wait for me.

A voyage to New York is always a social maelstrom, though at the same time I am constantly traveling through the city alone, trying to converge with this person or that person at this time or that. Subways and streets are a web of solitaries.

I have one job obligation--Thursday's jaunt to Jersey City--but otherwise this is a friends-and-family venture: the Morgan tomorrow with Jeannie to look at Ashbery drawings and Peter Hujar photographs; embracing Tom at the bus stop on Friday and then going to the Cloisters on Friday with him and Paul to look at the Bat Lord, a Zapotec clay sculpture made between 800 and 900, and the unicorn tapestries because we all adore them; then meeting our Lily's mother and stepfather on Saturday and going to Broadway with them to see Shmigadoon, which is not exactly our style of show but we are determined to have fun because NEW YORK and BROADWAY and BRIGHT LIGHTS and we love our Lily.

Visiting Chicago and New York City in the same week is a ridiculous schedule, but ridiculous schedule is my new middle name, and why not embrace it?