This slipping by of days.


And now, suddenly, I find myself at the end of the week, debating whether to head home tomorrow or Sunday, calculating how to get my work for this semester polished off in as timely a way as I can.

The dog, who can now only get up onto my bed if I lift all 38 pounds of her, wakes up momentarily in the blanket nest she worked ten minutes to build, looks at mea s if wondering what I'm still doing up, buries her head back in her gathered paws. "Why didn't you call her Frankendog on the blog?" my parents asked on the way home from dinner at the BBQ restaurant. The slits and sutures on her back make it look as though we had some kind of serious implant put into our dog. Like an upgrade, something that would let her regenerate her rear legs' muscle strength so that stair-climbing and bed-jumping would be easier.

For a being who's had my hand in her mouth three times today (administering an antibiotic that must taste fouler than foul), she's still mighty affectionate.

Back home now.


After I bought new tires for my old car, after I went out buying firewood and starter logs, I swung by the vet's office to see whether the dog was ready to come home. When one of the assistants brought her out to the waiting room, I was startled to see what they'd had to do to her this time around:


Our poor deaf puppy grows cysts and lumps and lipomas; this time, she was supposed to have a big dangly one removed from her chest, and instead she had two flat hard ones removed from her back. She might be too aged now to go under anesthetic again to have the chest lipoma removed, so she may just dangle it around for the long haul.

Now she sleeps soundly on the floor.

Simple.

This morning, I built a fire and sat beside it reading Elaine Scarry and then Oliver Sacks. And tomorrow, my deaf dog comes home from the spa; not long after she gets here, my brother will roll in from down south. I'll get some more auto repairs done. I'll buy some firewood. I'll make some pie crusts.

The pace is different here.

Then we took the piano apart.


After dinner, once I'd arrived at my parents' house this evening, I tried out my old upright piano, just to see how many of its keys are out of tune. Only one was ferociously bad, bad enough that my father and I had the same impulse: open that thing up and see if we can figure out how to tune it. Within about fifteen minutes, we (by which I mean: his mechanical know-how and my ear) had gotten it close enough for me to serenade them before we all headed upstairs to bed. It's good to be the daughter.

(Oh yeah: it occurs to me that I should clarify that I'm not playing hooky from school. One of the best things about my employer is that we get a full week for Thanksgiving. I will fight hard if we ever start hearing about changes to this aspect of our calendar, because the week usually comes just in time, and goodness knows December is hard enough as it is.)

Filled.


In the early afternoon, I put more birdseed in the feeder and more suet in the suet-cage. Within minutes the nuthatches and juncos and woodpeckers were back in their flitting delight. There may be no simpler pleasures.

Now the sun sets its streaky way.

Day in the life.


On the job means in the bed with a book, at the photocopier with a different book, on a table with the first book and with the photocopies and reading aloud and posing questions and making people laugh every once in awhile, in a chair in an auditorium trying to suppress a cough during a fellowship presentation, in a chair at the coffeeshop eating lunch forgetting about a meeting, in the office sending e-mails fielding questions taking phone calls counting submitted essays discussing cabinets locked and otherwise for a new building filing progress reports that threaten failure of my course if work is not submitted on time, at the piano learning how to count rhythms aloud while sight-reading, in the office thinking about a meeting, at the table for the meeting, in the living room reading a student thesis draft and a grad school proposal and a junior faculty research survey. And then contemplating bed, with another book. And blowing my stuffy nose and popping my ears all the long while.

As some of you know, one of my (and, if you know this, one of your) friends is very, and mysteriously, ill. This afternoon, he was due to go into hospital. Please keep your thoughts and/or prayers with him and his wee lovely family. They need us right now.

Fleeting.


Back of a stop sign, Utica, New York.

Sometimes, I don't know, either. I just bring it so that you can see it, too.

There were lovelier things today, but we're in the dark season here, and no one wants to startle a baby with a flash. And so what was lovely goes down in words only--the wide-faced wide-mouthed grins, the curling and cuddling, the pancakes and cider mill runs and bookstore jaunts, the crying and the various pains and the meanders.

Flooding.


The thing I like best about this plant, he says as we walk to the car, I carrying the baby, he carrying his coffee, she following with the diaper bag and the car keys, is the way it catches the water. They all do it, but this one does it the best.

Later, we sling the baby and I carry her through the mall, her sleeping face buried under my arm, her left arm stuck straight up to clutch my shirt. Look, look, little children say to their mothers at the Gap. Look at the baby.

Hatching.

When the visiting poet remarks that no one writes poems about teaching, your mind will jump, suddenly and inexplicably, to the incubator in which your kindergarten class sheltered chick and duckling eggs until the birds began to chip their ways out with their tiny beaks. And you will keep thinking about all that warmth, all those small births. All the turning of all those fragile eggs, and all the peeping that came next.