Yesterday was one of those days when the phone would not stop ringing, and 95 percent of the calls involved real estate, and everyone was in a lather, and then I had to take a "break" and drive to the bank to talk about mortgages, and now this morning I have to tidy up for a house viewer instead of editing a book about Richard Wilbur. [As a side note: Tom and I have discovered that selling this house requires a peculiar mix of arithmetical logic plus homey comforting chat so it's a good thing we're tag-teaming on the project.]

In sentimental news, Ruckus found the collar of his dead dog friend and went to sleep on it. In happy news, my college boy is making friends and admiring his professors and working on a monologue from Uncle Vanya for his theater audition. In musical news, my band has just been hired to play at Sugarloaf this winter. In mental improvement news, nothing to report; creative work still pending; possibly someday I will be brainy again.

After several nights in a row of waking up at 2 a.m., I finally managed to sleep through an entire night. Consequently I woke up confused and incompetent. After three attempts, however, I did figure out that, in order to make coffee, one must use both grounds and water. Let us hope that the rest of my day is not so challenging.

Given my accruing level of tiredness, I was unable, yesterday evening, to read anything more complex than New Yorker articles about TV shows that I have never watched. Even listening to baseball seemed too complicated. I ate chicken noodle soup, washed the dishes, and then sat on the couch and tried to watch one of those TV shows I'd been reading about, but the dialogue was too snappy and I couldn't understand anything the characters were saying. At this point the telephone began ringing; friends were calling me up to chat about selling the house and taking Paul to college, etcetera, etcetera, which was extremely nice of them, but I had entered a zone of stupidness, and, dear friends, if you are reading this now, I apologize for anything lumpy I said to you.

Thankfully, Ruckus decided to stalk into the room and inform me that it was bedtime. Sometimes a bossy cat with cold feet is the only route out of a static situation. Otherwise, I might still be on the couch struggling with dialogue.

I am back in the lonely saddle again, preparing to fill my long hours with reading, writing, editing, copying Rilke, and maybe packing . . . for while I was voyaging in Vermont, we received an offer on the house. So if all parties can work out an agreeable compromise, Tom and I will finally be able to take steps toward finding a place to live together in Portland.

In the meantime, limbo continues.

Today's projects include editing the Richard Wilbur bio, going to the bank, and boiling chicken bones to make stock for freezing. The darkness is very muggy this morning, but the forecast claims that autumn will be slipping in. Through the open window I can hear the crickets squeaking their end-of-summer song, and somewhere nearby a pileated woodpecker is cackling.

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Poetry-group members: Has everyone received his or her Geoffrey Hill collection yet? I believe we've been waiting on just one more person; and when she's ready, we'll get started.

I have returned from my long whirlwind trip to the far southern corner of Vermont, and now my youngest child has launched himself into a new life. Considering how much practice time he's had away from home--on wilderness canoe voyages, 6 weeks at Brown last summer--he was surprisingly anxious. And when the time came for me to leave campus, he was was close to tears.

Since then he has texted me several times and telephoned once. Everything is going well, he likes his roommate a lot, he's almost finished reading Julius Caesar, and he can't wait to start his classes. But I still hear the wistfulness in his voice. My older son lit out for the territories, but my younger son is not finding the adventure so easy. All will be well, but this moment is a rather choked-up one.

Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument

The state of Maine received stunning and wonderful news yesterday: after landowner Roxanne Quimby transferred the deed of more than 87,000 acres to the U.S. government, President Obama announced an executive order creating the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument. When I first moved here more than 20 years ago, talk was beginning about Quimby's hopes for a new national park, but there was much local nastiness. One of the founders of the Burt's Bees cosmetic company, she had used her earnings to buy up large swaths of timberland, pissing off paper companies and irritating hunters and snowmobilers who felt they had rights to use the property. "Dump Roxanne" bumper stickers proliferated on pickup trucks. But as milltowns in the region have begun to die, it has become clearer that conservation is really their only economic hope. And so little by little Quimby and her son Lucas St. Clair, who is now the face of the project, made their case for its protection.

This is Wabanaki country, Thoreau country, Audubon country. Its 87,000 acres are the giant version of my tiny 40-acre plot: running water, vernal pools, massive trees, lichens and stones and teeming animal life. I cannot tell you how jubilant I am about this. And our horrible reactionary governor is powerless to stop it.

If you're wondering about how the cretin and his cronies are taking the news, well, here's a headline in today's Bangor Daily News: "LePage conservation chief: 'Swampy woodlands' should not be a national monument." Go ahead and tell that to this moose, you moron.

For the past several weeks my garlic harvest has been curing in the barn, and yesterday I cut down the bundles and trimmed up the heads for storage. It was a beautiful crop: fifty-plus heads, fat and white and firm. Under normal circumstances I'd now separate out about a third of the crop for seed, but I have no idea where I'll be next spring so I cannot plant garlic in October. This makes me a bit melancholy. A friend fighting cancer once told me that seeing her garlic sprout in April was how she knew she'd managed to stay alive.

Ah well.

I looked at the news this morning: a morass of earthquakes and bloodbaths and racism and Donald Trump. But I have reliable heat in my house. And my cat hasn't run away from home again. And Paul and I will hug Tom at an early-morning diner breakfast on Friday. And my sister will meet me in Vermont and we will spend a giggly night together after we unpack Paul. And I have figured out an alternate route to the college so I don't have to drive over the bridge that scares me. None of this is fair, and it all makes me cry, and it all makes me angry, and it all makes me ashamed, and it all makes me wonder what grace demands, and what travesties loom, and where, and why, and when.

Today will be another running-around day, mostly for the sake of getting out of the house while the propane-company employers install a Rinnai heater in my living room. With this expense, we will cross another line: we will no longer own a house entirely heated by wood.

Other than the uglification factor involved in adding a boxy white heater to the living-room decor, I am relieved about the change. If we sell the house, we will need to have backup heat so the buyers can get a mortgage. If I live alone in the house, I will need to have backup heat because Tom hasn't cut any wood for the winter. Last year's leftovers won't get me through January.

Yesterday I taught the boy how to sew on a button. I read about a sadistic commander's horrific regime on Australia's Norfolk Island at the turn of the nineteenth century. I copied out some of Rilke's Duino Elegies. I made curried coconut soup with lemongrass. I mowed grass and picked dahlias. In the evening I closed the windows and put on my thick red bathrobe. Autumn crept through the cracks, and the boy played the piano in his room. In a few days I will be back to living alone, but at least now I know what I'm facing.