Tonight we will enjoy our first accumulating snowfall of the season. I wish we could celebrate it in the new house, sitting beside the new woodstove, watching the shadows flicker on the new paint, instead of slogging back and forth from house to apartment to house to apartment. But so be it.

Today we will pick up our order of floor tile. We will buy a kitchen stove, a medicine cabinet, and some towel bars. Tom will spread another layer of joint compound on the kitchen walls. I will wash windows and light fixtures and toilets, lug some construction materials down the basement stairs, vacuum up some ugly dirt, and possibly thread a string of Christmas lights through the banisters, just to cheer us up.

A year ago, you may recall, I was dealing with frozen well pipes at the Harmony house, along with myriad other water-related problems. This is better than that.

But I tell you: next year I will have a Christmas tree and decorations. I will bake Emily Dickinson's black cake and make eggnog. I will send cards. Just you wait and see.