Saturday morning sunshine, and very welcome it is. I do love rain, but a break now and then is a refreshment. Finally I'll be able to hang out some clothes, put up the hammock again, catch up on grass mowing, and deal with that giant branch in the backyard. At some point this weekend Tom and I are planning to stake out a new garden bed in the backyard, and then I'll start moving my composted leaves into the marked-off plot, where they'll serve as an underlayer for new soil. I don't exactly know what shrubs I'm going to plant there: something with an upright growth habit, though, that can serve as a thin screen for my woodpile and compost corner without flopping over into paths or chairs.

Today is Paul's last day in Portland, so we're going to take part of the afternoon off, at his request, and go into town for craft beer and poutine. This time tomorrow, he'll be sitting in a bus, heading south, and we will be settling into Empty Nest, Round 2.

Strange times for us all.

I'm still sleeping badly--a little less badly than earlier in the week, but still with the sense of being specter of myself.

Yet tomorrow I'll have a room of my own again . . . a dusty room, greatly in need of a thorough cleaning. A small, bare room with hardly any furniture: just a standing table, a dining-room chair, some bookshelves filled with poetry. 

I don't quite know how to feel.

I slept so badly last night. I really have no idea how I'm going to last through the morning. Maybe I'll feel more functional after I finish this cup of coffee because I need to take my exercise class, I need to finish editing an article, I need to wash sheets and haul trash and mow grass and help Paul move stuff into the basement. I guess I'll manage, but, ugh, what a miserable night.

The rain was part of what kept me awake--hours and hours of pounding--and now everything outside is sodden. Earlier in the day a wind-burst tore a big branch off one of the Norway maples, so there's that to deal with too, once things dry out a bit.

Send me a few gentle thoughts, if you have any to spare. This week is not getting easier.

Well, yesterday turned out to be not so great, as my mother called first thing in the morning to tell me that she's probably going to need heart surgery this fall. So that news colored the day . . . a shadow for us to crouch under for the foreseeable future.

But I did my desk work and I made bread and I mowed grass and I rescued a friend stranded at the Subaru dealership (believe it or not, a mouse ate her gas tank!). I even slept decently. And now a cool Thursday morning has arrived, air fresh and chilly, a whiff of September in late July.

Let us take our solace where we may.

 Today my older son, James, is 27 years old. He began life as a fractious, unconsolable screamer, grew into a superstar chatterbox, lover of backhoes, Mr Fix-It Junior with a room-filling smile, bossy big brother, tease and prankster, social smooth-talker, lover of house pets, the boy who attached a camera to a remote control truck and followed the dog around the house, indifferent to high school, a college whiz, devoted friend, moved to a new city on the strength of a six-week internship, said confidently "I'll make myself indispensable" and did, and now six years later has risen to have his name in the credits of a major TV show, loving son, supportive brother, engaged citizen, scraped-up mountain biker, at the mercy of a spoiled cat . . .

It is a privilege and a delight, to be his mother.

* * *

Rain seems to have broken up the cloud of smoke that was hanging over the city. The air is much fresher this morning, and my throat is no longer full of scratch and cough. Not much else new to report--just another day of editorial tromping. I'm feeling a bit jaded about my work prospects. It looks like I won't be teaching in Monson this fall, given the complexities that schools are facing with masks, travel, and unvaccinated kids. Maybe the program will be able to relaunch in the winter; maybe not. So I'm entering the school year pretty much in the way I entered it last year--without a teaching job--and this doesn't make me feel great.

This morning's air is heavy with smoke. A pall from the western wildfires sags over the windless neighborhood, smelling not of campfire but of an unpleasant cloying perfume. I hope a breeze kicks up and carries this shroud out to sea.

Yesterday I finished up a manuscript consultation, which means that, for the moment, the academic journal is the only work-stack on my desk. And I also did the grocery shopping, cleaned floors, and cooked a big company dinner (roast chicken and mashed potatoes, with mushroom gravy), so now I almost feel like I'm on vacation. Later today, after my editing stint, I'm getting a haircut; we'll have fried mashed-potato cakes and a salad for dinner; and I intend to spend a chunk of my off-hours flopped on the couch with Wuthering Heights. Such nasty characters. They never cease to amaze.

This morning's fog is like a cloud squatting on the house. Branches and windows are running with moisture, and the air has the clarity of glasses covered in fingerprints. Who knows what's around the corner? Possibly the street has broken off from the mainland and is floating out into the Atlantic. 

The day will be packed with stuff-to-do. I'll undergo my exercise class first thing, and then I'll be back to my desk work, trying to concentrate on manuscript files as Paul barges around the house packing and unpacking. He is so excited, so eager to jump headfirst into adult life, so tired of being a well-behaved semi-child in limbo.

Tonight our northcountry-diaspora friend Lucy is coming over for dinner: I might make lasagna; I might roast a chicken; it all depends how the grocery store treats me.  And I've still got those peaches to deal with: as of yesterday, they weren't soft enough to process, so that will be one more chore to shoehorn into my schedule. I'm working to keep my energy up, as I know I will need it over these next few days. This is going to be a draining week.

I did some transplanting yesterday, a first step in planning for the garden's autumn look: pulling out most of the sprawling oversized broccoli plants and replacing them with fennel seedlings, moving some kale seedlings among the cabbages. And I spent a long time pruning and tying up the tomatoes, tying up peppers and eggplant, training the cucumber vine up a trellis . . . my attempt to keep the wild growth as compact as possible. Meanwhile, in the house, Paul had emptied boxes of his stored dorm-room stuff onto the living room floor and was sorting through them in a whirlwind of loud snap decisions. I tell you: this week will be chaos.

We've got rain on the way today, and I won't be able to escape into the garden. However, I'm going to have a lot of ripe peaches to distract me from the moving turmoil. My neighbor is picking up a box today, shipped directly from Georgia, and wants to split them with me, so I've got to do something with them pretty quickly. I foresee an afternoon of blanch/slice/pack/freeze and a fat peach pie for dessert. Yesterday she picked up a couple of boxes of wild blueberries for me from the farmers' market, and most of them went into the freezer too. Unexpected bounty: every year there's something!

Tomorrow I'll be back to work . . . juggling an academic journal with a poetry consultation, trying to get back into my exercise-class routine, dealing with house uproar, hosting a dinner guest in the evening.

Someday I'll write again.