I'm always surprised by the fact that the more exhausted I am the less able I am to sleep. Dropping off is easy enough, but lately waking occurs not at my usual 7 but at 6 or 5 or sometimes 4 a.m., as today. It seems always to correlate with liver stress from heavy lifting, but what a drag. Still, it's nice to have some hours entirely alone - well, almost entirely. Cats and dogs welcome an early breakfast, and even the dimmest kitchen lamp will elicit the lovebirds' piercing It's-morning! bleats and shrieks.

The exhaustion sets in in the midst of a thorough reorganizing of the Friends-of-the-Library bookshop behind the donation and installation of nine large new shelving units. I can go no further alone. Today I put out the call for volunteers. It's risky - everyone seems to determine the difference between fiction and nonfiction via cover art - but it must be done. Or I just might fall over dead.

***

The hugs-dispensing chatty bright gorgeous neighbor kids, my beloveds since the day I first looked over this property four years ago and they clambered over the back fence to introduce themselves and welcome me, are moving away next week. I'm a little griefstricken about it. Strolled about the grocery store yesterday weeping a little (see exhaustion, above) to think of losing them. KierstuhnDeaven&Jewell ages 12, 9, and 6 will leave this remote little town next Saturday for a beautiful new home in a big city hundreds of miles away. And my life will be so much the poorer.

We have a tentative plans for a farewell sleep-over here on Friday night.

I'd better rest up ...