Our first big snowstorm is forecast, and I will be cooking black beans and rice, sourdough bread, and gingerbread squirrels. My boy-shaped cookie cutters are broken, so squirrels seem like the next-best option. Everyone likes to eat a squirrel.

I've almost finished rereading Millbank, and at the moment I am most excited by the blatant parallels to Jane Eyre's "hidden madwoman" plot device . . . except that Mary Holmes is much kinder about madness than Charlotte Bronte is--so much so that I'm starting to wonder if Holmes was dealing with her own real-life attic madwoman. I rather doubt that the Internet will give me any helpful information about this, but I'll start looking, and writing.

Meanwhile, the snow will be falling, and the dog will be snoring, and the not-quite-dry-enough firewood will be popping and sizzling, and the Christmas tree lights will falter out when we lose our power, and Tom will fall asleep on the couch alongside the dog, and it will be a lovely quiet day for documenting my unsubstantiated speculations about a nineteenth-century bestselling melodrama.