We socialized a lot this holiday season. So far, a party, visitors, driving to Portland to see our sons and their families, and their extended families. The weekend after next, we will have a full house here for Twelfth Night. Gary wants Dundee cake, and we will have salmon and mushrooms and grains and salads. Our grandson Logan will get his waffles for breakfast, and weather permitting, we will walk the beaches.

Our travels have been lucky so far. No snow or ice. Just now the sky is a tender aqua over the ocean. It hailed a moment ago, but all that has cleared off the windows. There is almost enough sand for a walk.

I am supposed to be completing a final draft of a novel, but I have not gotten to it yet. I think maybe I will have to beg off. I think I want to do that. A kind reader in London surely has other things to do, and I would like to do something smaller. I wrote a story for Ruby some time ago, “Louise DeFleur Makes Magic Shoes.” There is a sequel about the alligator (or crocodile?) that lives under her bed and the beginning of a third story about the trolls in the basement. I want to work on those three stories and put them in a little book for my grandchildren. A Twelfth Night present. Illustrated, maybe. Maybe.

Or maybe I will nap and watch movies on television, or maybe I will lie back on the sofa and finally read The Tie that Binds by Kent Haruf. It’s been on my to-read list for a long time and I read the first 14 pages, which are really good. I have an early Le Guin story collection I have never read start-to-finish, and Gary gave me The Best American Short Stories of 2018 edited by Roxane Gay. And I have been reading aloud from Patrick O’Brian whenever I could get Gary to sit still. Reading is definitely on the program.

The silk and mohair scarf has four of five bands done, and I don’t like having yarn for a new project till it’s done. I really want to order yarn for a pullover. The sale ends today.

Perhaps I am doing too much—my mother’s voice is still in my head warning me to not overdo.

So for a little while, at least until the sun goes down, I will watch the ocean sending waves onshore, while really going out.