Today looks to be the sort of October day--breezy, blue-eyed--that makes me feel like it's my birthday, even though my birthday doesn't happen until next week. It is, however, my friend Angela's birthday, and we and our families are going to celebrate by driving to the coast, looking at art and the sea, and going out to dinner. In short, we will do things that are impossible to do in Harmony and Wellington, where we really live, where there is no ocean (though we do have a wood chipper/mechanical leviathan parked at Morrison's Garage, and its operator and I were marveling together about this strange and complicated machine as he pumped my gas this morning), no art (except for the eclectic display at the dump), and no restaurant (except for the Breakfast Nook, which is never open, and store-made pizza, which we turn to in only in emergencies).

I forget if I've mentioned here that I've dedicated my rereading memoir to Angela because she, too, is a rereader . . . and purer one than I am: a reader who doesn't feel the urge to write herself into the story, as I do. So in honor of her birthday, I think I'll copy out what I wrote to her in the acknowledgments:

Finally, I want to thank Angela DeRosa, my dear neighbor in the woods, who borrows my old novels and then returns them tied up in pink ribbon--a love note for me, for herself, for the characters, for the writer. We're all mixed up in this story together.