The other night, my daughters began shouting in the other room. In what I can best describe as my attitude of what fresh hell now? I asked what was up.

A raccoon was climbing up our cedar-shingled house in the dark. Which might fairly well explaining living with kids. Expect what you could never expect. Say you’re deep into an Elena Ferrante novel and you realize a mole has scurried out from behind a kitchen cabinet and is now in the sink, checking out an unwashed dinner skillet. Where is that on a day’s plan?

We trapped the mole and released it down the road (at the neighbors’ driveway), and the girls determined the raccoon tracks led into the sugarhouse and didn’t come out (fine).

The younger daughter and her friend ran into the house yesterday and grabbed ice skates. The roadside ditches were frozen perfectly for ice skating.

This afternoon is filled with sunlight and lemon meringue pie baking. How’s that for poetry?

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power or our will.

– Epictetus