We got home a little after 2 p.m. yesterday. So, after assuaging the cat, we went for a fast walk in the cold air, rediscovering muscles and lungs after days of sitting and rich food, before hunkering down with our books by the newly lit wood stove.

Not a flake of snow in Portland but it's cold: a scarf day, a house day. Today I need to catch up with laundry and housework and groceries, reacquaint myself with routine before pouring myself into next week's duties. Already the washing machine is churning; already I'm trying to remember what's in the freezer, what's on the list, what needs to be scrubbed and soaped.

But for a few more minutes I can sit here quietly with my coffee. I'm almost finished with Nabokov's Pale Fire, looking forward to starting the used novel I picked up in Amherst on Friday: Edmund White's Hotel de Dream. I'll rummage mildly among my household tasks, make a stew, maybe, or a ragu--something fragrant and slow. I'll clean bathrooms and wash sheets and read my books and go for another walk, and maybe after dinner I'll look at the Bills game before I fall asleep.

The little house is an embrace . . . tiny rooms and shabby furniture, Tom's bright photos on the walls, dried garden flowers on the mantle, woodbox piled high, the small and glossy kitchen; upstairs, our desks, our bed, a swish of wind in the eaves.