Five a.m., 18 degrees. It's the first working day of the new year. The house is warm; the furnace is rumbling; the coffee is fresh and strong.

I have things to do today: marketing for the teaching conference, planning for upcoming classes, working on web copy, answering stacks of emails. I expect my next editing project to arrive this week. I need to run errands. Our driveway will host a new neighbor's moving pod for a few days. I'm not in the classroom again till next week, but I've got plenty to keep me busy till then.

My son James gave me Daniel Mason's novel North Woods for Christmas, and I dug into it yesterday, in between making Julia Child's Reine de Saba cake and her porc roti. I'm amazed by it thus far; it is a surprising and magical fictional history of a single homesite, featuring a multitude of characters--human, animal, plant, corpse. Somehow I'd never heard of it before, so thank goodness my son had. The book is shaking me up, in a good way.

It's lovely to start the new year with an excellent novel, a French chocolate cake, a brisk walk with my boyfriend, a good night's sleep. This morning I feel lively and cheerful, ready to trudge back into my desk chores, to gird myself for the next round of travel and teaching, to consider the new poem draft unrolling on my laptop, to hang laundry and wash dishes and sweep floors and soak beans (tonight's meal: moros y cristianos--Caribbean black beans and rice--a family favorite).

Cheers to you all, as you slide back into the dance.