This morning we'll be heading back to Portland, and home, and regular life. Tomorrow T will start work on a new building site, and I will drive to Monson, a turn-around that will require some extreme laundry contortions. So we can't procrastinate much: within a couple of hours Chuckie will once again be amazed by the wonders of travel.

Over the course of these long and formless days I have read hundreds of pages of Dos Passos and Berryman, plus most of two Louise Penny mysteries. I've revised a manuscript and written a new epilogue poem. I've gotten up late and taken naps and gone on long walks and prepared semblances of meals. Tom has read, slept, sorted prints, taken new photos, gone on long walks, and eaten semblances of meals. Around the edges we've done the bare minimum of cleaning, zero laundry, and very little useful work. We've enjoyed the company of our entertaining and well-behaved cat pal, and we've visited with our old friend every single day. We've stared out our back window into the most beautiful of seacoast views.

It's been a wonderful week--even a productive one, in a few ways--but time management was not a key feature, and I wonder how I'll manage to reinsert myself into clock world tomorrow morning. But for a few more moments I'm not going to think about packing or driving or washing clothes. A fire crackles in the stove. Chuck stares at the coffeemaker, with its perplexing spurts and burbles. Tom rolls over in the creaky bed. A deer pauses in the yard. Dawn paints sky and water.