"We're going to Portland," Ella declared one Tuesday afternoon, steering me away from the printer in my office, where I had been double-checking the slides for a research presentation due that week. "Just us. No Marcus. No work. No research talks. Just Portland and whatever trouble we can get into."
I laughed. "You're supposed to be a mature, married woman."
"We need girls' trips," she said, crossing her arms over her chest. "You need to remember what it's like to be young and foolish and not give a damn about your research or your carefully cultivated sense of self." She paused, then added, "When was the last time you did something completely frivolous?"
I had to think about it. Hard. And, in the end, I couldn't come up with an answer.
"That's settled," she said. "We're going this weekend."
And so we went.
