No Rest.

There's wind kicking up out there, which must mean the front's coming through—this is the week of tearing the writing shed down to the studs on both sides, but saving the roof, so I confess to feeling OK about having waited for tomorrow morning to start the big exterior demo: open studs with a saved roof probably makes for a terrific sail. One thing I know for sure I want in a shed: I want it in my yard, and not down the street.

The how of all of this has had me tied up in knots, though: came close to tears yesterday thinking about the first or second of January, once the walls are back on and the stove's in, sitting in a lawn chair with a cup of coffee on the concrete slab and listening to the fire burn and warm my 209 square feet. I know how to do it all, or that part I don't know how to do I can figure out—I've just been thinking about it too long. Need to go ahead and pull it all apart so I can start putting it back together. I've been chewing on it a year. That leaves plenty of time to make good decisions, but now it's time to really go on and make them. I'm dreaming of flashing, of beveled siding, of chop saws and framing. I'm ready to go back to dreaming normal things, like debilitating fear of the world at large.

It's been almost four weeks since I worked on the new book. The inside of my head feels like it. I have to teach myself not to pause like this.

What do you want to know, Weatherheads? Do you want to know about the cold? About the four sunny days coming, and the chance of snow after that? This front that's dry here but pushing all manner of rain ahead of it down south? The coming solstice? Coffee beans? Good scotch? The notion that one full night of sleep might save us all? Or just this: the backyard steeple, which I can see from all over town, lit up in all this early dark, a strange marker, always, of where I'm meant to bed down?