Presently it's 35 degrees here, but the forecast is for 80 degrees later today. That seems too strange to think about. I will be sitting on a soccer field in Dover-Foxcroft, fighting midges and sunburn when I ought to be wearing mittens and wishing for coffee. Sideline seasonal confusion will reign, yet the ice-cream stand has stupidly closed for the winter.

Meanwhile Tom will be making my birthday dinner. I have no idea what he's planned, other than Julia Child's cream of mushroom soup (which is suitable, she writes, "for grand occasions"). I have a feeling that I'll also be picking the mushrooms for this soup since mycological scavenging is not one of Tom's preoccupations, although he enjoys the results.

When I'm not soccer watching or mushroom hunting or sitting on the couch waiting for Verlander to start pitching, I may be tearing out my frostbitten cucumbers and scarlet runners, or I may be finishing the snarky Muriel Spark novel I spent most of yesterday reading. Snarky is not a word I generally find myself using, but I can't think of a better one to describe Spark.

Or, depending on Tom's dinner plans, I may be drinking slightly too much wine at the wrong time of the day. When it comes to birthday dinner, I am in the hands of fate, which always treats me royally but sometimes gives me a headache the next day.