Today we have friends coming over for dinner.  Tash will make hors d’oeuvrs and Dale will make dessert.  I’m making a spoon roast, potatoes Lyonaise and my asparagus.  We have good bread from P B Boulangerie.  I may make another sided dish if I feel like it this afternoon.

Last night we went to Tony’s new apartment on West Main Street in town.  He has a restaurant in Truro – next town over--- Terra Luna, which when we used to go to restaurants, we went to often.  I’m afraid to eat inside at a restaurant.  At our party, we had three rooms and fully vaxxed guests.  In a restaurant, you don’t know if the Covid equivalent of Typhoid Mary was sitting at your table before you or at the next one. Remeber, she never got sick herself and had no obvious symptoms.  Just a carrier.

 We have spent a number of Xmas ‘s Eves with Tony and his mother, my friend Karen.  She cooks really good Italian food. They celebrate that date with their equivalent of the 7 fishes feast but they usually do 11 dishes of seafood.  Always great.  Last year, of course, no party. This year it was half the size is used to be, just family, friends, and us.  We’re all trying to navigate this new reality of permanent plague. 

Willow has fallen in love with the tree.  She contemplates it.  Studies it.  Loves to get under it.  Is the only cat who takes down some of the non-breakable ornaments in the bottom third of the tree.  one night she had 11 “kills” but  usually just takes off one or two.  Especially birds.  Our tree has a lot of animals, birds, vegetables, fruit. Two camels a reindeer, a dolphin, beehive several tigrs and lions, a polar bear, many cats, a couple of pigs, several horses, a snail, many sea creatures including a gorgeous narwhale Melenie gave us.

In the dry house of winter, I find my skin is far more sensitive – even though summer is full of critters that bite and leave me itching like crazy. If I could, I’d bathe in moisturizer.  I notice even the cats sneeze occasionally. 

I’m still reading mss. for my June juried intensive poetry workshop.  I‘ve been getting the usual mix of excellent, banal, and those on the cusp, which have promise and but also problems.  The excellent I accept at once, the terrible I reject at once with what I hope are useful comments, and those on the cusp I hold on to and reread until I can make up my mind. I need 12 poets and 2 alternates. Often in late April when it is time to pay the remainder of the fee and produce 15 poems that form the basis for the conferences, the workshop becomes too real for one or two of the accepted poets, and they drop out.  Hence the alternates, which often get in. 

I’m reading a 600 page novel that the Monthly Review intends to publish.It’s slow going.Very dense in historical facts. A lot of research went into it obviously.