Four fifteen

Up at four fifteen with the dog, who has decided that four fifteen is a reasonable hour to have opinions. Stood in the yard in a coat over pyjamas while he took eleven minutes to make a decision about a leaf. It was completely silent. There is a point in the very early morning in this neighbourhood where the road noise has not started and you can hear the creek, which you cannot hear at any other time of day, and I stood there in wellingtons and heard it. And I thought, I could do this. Then I thought, you are thinking about a baby again, in a yard, at four fifteen, about a dog, and went back to bed. Did not sleep. Lay there until the alarm doing the arithmetic I have started doing at red lights — if we started trying in the spring, if it took a year, which it does for a lot of people, if we wanted two.