It’s been supernaturally warm here. For more than two weeks we’ve been enjoying temps in the seventies, and last weekend we broke out our shorts and dared to bare our winter-whitened legs to the glare of the sun. And we bought a couple of Adirondack chairs so we could lounge on the patio while sipping beach cocktails with little paper umbrellas in them. It’s spring.

After a long winter cooped up inside, B couldn’t stand waiting another minute to putter around in her garden. She dressed up in her grubbiest gardening clothes, broke into the garden shed to drag out all her shovels and rakes and implements of destruction, and set to work cleaning up a patch where she planted spinach and radishes. The first day she came inside panting after an hour. “I’m so out of shape,” she said, dripping sweat.

And so am I. I was cleaning up the corner of the basement where I used to brew beer, with the aim of brewing some beer back there again. It was a terrific mess of empty bottles, the first thing I had to clean up. Then I got a hammer and made the bar explode. The house came with a bar in the basement, like all houses from the sixties, and it was handmade, like all bars in the basement were, but it was old and falling apart and it was taking up too much room, so I tore it to pieces. Then I cut the pieces up and started rebuilding it so it doesn’t take up as much room.

That was yesterday. This morning I hurt all over.