Liz Taylor would have greeted Richard Burton wearing a slip and a whiskey sour, but I was wearing old leggings and a horrible sweater when Tom walked through the door last night. Nonetheless, I was beaming because, as I immediately told him, "It's your first night home for dinner!"

Dinner was elk chili . . . a pound of ground elk, courtesy of a hunter friend, simmered with ancho peppers and beans and tomatoes and fried cumin and cilantro and lime, and it was spicy and tender and delicious. Cooking in a kitchen without running water turns out to be irritating but manageable, made much easier by the fact that everything else in the room is shiny and beautiful and designed specifically for me as a cook. It feels like the most wonderful love gift: getting a brand-new kitchen from a master carpenter who also happens to be my husband.

Tonight's dinner: roast chicken, probably with a side of roasted rutabaga dice, maybe with some basmati or farro, and then a cucumber salad, or maybe cherry tomatoes, or maybe something else I haven't thought of yet.

Otherwise, today will be an editing day, followed by a bout of unpacking and closet angst and a round of floor cleaning, punctuated by a walk and a spate of firewood hauling. And writing and reading, maybe. Or submitting poems, even. Anything could happen.