Today is "figure out what the hell we're packing" day. We will be cooking for ourselves and/or our friend all week, except for one dinner out on Monday night, so we have to menu-plan and then fill coolers, bags, and baskets . . . and this includes bringing our own good knife and olive oil, etc., because we do not travel light when it comes to vacation meals. Nor do we travel light when it comes to books and cameras. I've got a laptop, a notebook, and a stack of volumes for teaching and class planning and reading. Tom's bringing five different cameras, including his giant view camera, which lives in a case the size of a small trunk. Let me not forget the rest: assorted tripods, suitcases, backpacks, snow boots, hiking boots, water bottles, speaker for listening to music and baseball, cribbage board, wine, possibly snowshoes, garden gloves, maybe some tools, and undoubtedly something else I've forgotten. All of this will be crammed, somehow, into my tiny Subaru hatchback. Wish us luck.

But we are in high spirits. Last night, as I was making dinner, I decided to play Beyonce's new album, Cowboy Carter (which is pretty good, by the way). Tom idled into the kitchen to find out what I was listening to, and before long he'd proposed a vacation project: should we listen to all of Beyonce's catalog in order? "Oh, yes!" I said, because this sort of thing is exactly what entertains us: a little invented undertaking, with sociable commentary.

So, a week with Beyonce, in the snowy north, along the muddy coast. A week with this guy I really like. A week of cooking good food in awkward kitchens, and teaching kids and editing books, and tramping around in the mud, and not waking up to an alarm, and reading and reading, and scribbling in my notebook, and wandering up to my friend's house, and trying to identify strange-looking seabirds, and stoking a big wood stove, and gathering with townspeople to see an eclipse, and forgetting to pack something important, like toothpaste. Our typical messy sort of holiday. Apron strings flying, laughing at each other, making a soundtrack, missing the cat.