Dinner with N tonight, my other N's husband,

while my other N is away at a writing retreat in Virginia. We eat the beautiful fish my other N cooked before leaving and finish a bottle of okay red table wine I bring with me. Bella, the blonde beauty with the pink-brown nose and mustard eyes is so eager to visit she puts her paws on my chest and barks from the other room when we've forgotten her. I am most like her in most things and wonder how anyone can tolerate such doggedness. So fixed in my working seclusion here that when N asked after the faculty meeting what I planned for dinner I didn't know, but thought, well, something I need to do, what? And couldn't say. I hadn't planned: I will take a long bath or channel surf CSI or brush my biting cat or wipe counters and dust, or sort papers to grade, or put on my silly slippers and black and pink satin pajamas and wind down with an antihistamine and Dante and sleep until 3 or 4 in the morning. Then prep for class, I don't know what. I drew the usual blank crisis that occurs to me each day when the rush of the long work day closes, when I don't know what I'm supposed to do. And what I thought was: write. Eat your other N's food with N, then send your other N another poem. The third this week? But N is such wonderful company, I am sated and looking towards bed. My other N will not yet get another poem before she returns from Virginia. Oh the grading I must do tomorrow before poems, but the poems are here again suddenly, and so puppy awkward and puppy innocent I can't wait to get home to them and see them list to one side and have their new feet fall out from under them. How long can you keep them as babies? I don't know--this is all new to me--but the right answer right now is for as long as possible.