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Call: A hermit thrush flies into the glass picture window.

Action: My husband picks it up. Sees its neck is broken, but it is still breathing. He strokes it, then places it on the mantle nestled in a rabbit fur winter hat that belongs to one of the kids.

Result: The bird dies anyway, of course.

What our youngest does when she gets home: Holds the bird, wonders at how soft the feathers are on the top of its head.

What the husband says: I felt so bad for it, dying on such a nice sunny day, and him being such a cute little bird that I put him on the mantle for a while.

What I cook for dinner: Burritos filled with flounder sautéed with butter and garlic and paprika and basil.

What the children eat before dinner is ready: Chocolate chip cookies, hunks of brie cheese, bite-size carrots, and strawberry greek yogurt.

What my husband and I both say to them: Stop, stop eating so much before dinner!

What the children do at dinner: Talk over ...

Call: A lump in the throat of a young Japanese man coming to life in the book I'm working on.

Action: Resist temptation to Google everything there is about lumps in the throat, like causes, appearances, and symptoms.

Result: Continue writing as if it doesn't matter so much, as if what really matters is how he sits up in bed to be fed shark fin soup in a black lacquer bowl.

Thoughts on drive home from market: Is the flood water really rising again?

What the husband says: The waters are trying to tell us something. They're saying move your roads over and your houses over we're coming through, because the way you're trying to move back the rocks and boulders into the stream bed is just going to make our current run faster the next time a hurricane hits.

What our daughter says when she gets home: There's a new girl in school whose name backwards spells "heaven".

What the husband says: That's so she recognizes the sign for it when she ...

Call: A cut on my son's knee from the rooster's talon who went after my son while he was taking out the compost tray.

Action: Told son to put some Betadine ointment on the cut and a Band-Aid.

Result: Compost tray is still on the porch and no one has taken it to the compost pile, and the chickens and the rooster are now eating it. The rooster is very polite, he lets the hens get their fill first, and then he steps in.

What my son does to me while we're jogging up our dirt road: Takes his Band-Aid off and sticks it to the back of my shirt.

What the streams are doing alongside the dirt road: Running high. More rains have come. Orange newts cross slowly in front of us, looking for higher ground.

What the dog does: Chases grouse far out ahead, where they rise up from the brush with a loud beating of their wings.

What my husband does: Helps a newt, the length of his thumb, cross the ...

Call: Pet raccoon has eaten mice poison we set out years ago.

Action: Wagged finger at pet raccoon, told her not to die.

Result: Pet raccoon proved to me she wasn't going to die in the least. Pet raccoon stayed up all night playing with Legos in the kids' loft. I could hear her batting the pieces around on the floor.

What the kids said to her: Scout, you stop playing now and get to sleep!

How I woke up in the morning: With Scout making a trilling sound and licking my eyelids and curling her tongue into my ear. She moved on to "seeing" my face with her paws. Like a blind person would, she gently and thoroughly explored the dips and hollows of my features as if she were molding me out of clay.

Why I got out of bed: Scout, sitting on my face, started biting my nose for fun.

What I cooked for breakfast: Wheatena with butter and maple syrup.

What Scout ate for breakfast: Wheatena without butter and maple syrup at first because I thought it would be better for her, but then I added it to bowl later because Wheatena is ...

Call: Powells.com asks me if I'd like to write blog entries for a week.

Action: Bite nails. Wonder what I'll write about.

Result: Start writing entries as if they were written with the same structure that I wrote The Call, as diary entries, only I won't write them from my husband's POV, the way The Call is. Instead, I'll write them from my POV.

Call: A draft horse with a sarcoid on his neck.

Action: Drove to farm with my husband over damaged roads that were so torn up by the flood it seemed as if we were really driving over rocks and boulders in a dried out stream bed.

Result: Watched husband tranq the draft horse, then inject it with carbocaine while the owner pointed out to us her new herd of 10 white propane tanks that had migrated to her field. They were from a heating company miles up the road and had floated down in swirling brown flood waters. They were close together, huddled by her barn wall. The shape of the incision made it look like the draft horse now had a third eye on its neck.

What the ...