Sunday, December 1st

I WENT TO BED feeling ill and was afraid I had caught the twenty-four-hour flu that is about, but this morning I was able to get up as usual to make our breakfast, do the chores, bring up wood from the cellar, build the fire, change my sheets, empty the wastebaskets. I enjoy these chores when I am feeling well, but today I wanted to lie down and sleep. Finally at 9:30 I did. Judy was out with the dog. When they came back she left him outside and he barked and barked, so rest was out of the question. Finally I called down to ask her to get him in, please. For some reason she didn’t do this. So I ran down and got him in myself, screaming with frustration. One minute later she had let him out and he was barking again! At such times it is as though Judy were possessed by a spirit of nay-saying … I don’t know what else to call it. Her restlessness is getting worse, so I can never come up here now for even an hour without being aware that she is roving around, in and out, and of course these last days I have been terrified that she would go into the woods and get shot, or Tamas get shot (he looks so like a fox).