I'm sitting at the laptop in my studio, which is in fact a desk built into the corner of the garage, a garage which just now has remnants of the BBQ smell of the porkchops Christian cooked earlier.

I'm at the laptop, finishing a beer and munching on chips I've portioned into a blue kids IKEA bowl reading the latest post in Writing Routines. The interviewee talks about daily contact with her manuscript, about waking up and writing first thing. Something of Anne T. Donahue's sarcastic voice has infected my head and all I can think is "cheese on a cracker I hate waking up to write". I could really go on about disliking waking up, but the point here is routine.

Summer spreads like syrup over routine. Rigidity is smoothed, right angles are lost in a flood of beach days, swimming pool visits and evening prolongations. To speak of routine, now, in August, is anathema. Nobody, especially not parents with children, wants to hear of your good habits. Tell me instead, they say – not with words, but with shorts and suntans – how you celebrated your kids’ birthdays, what you are doing with the seasonal tomatoes, where you’re going this weekend. Save me from your productivity until September.

And yet, nothing satisfies me more than having something to show for these two months when my husband is home.