It is raining for the first time in weeks, and Ruckus the Kat is shocked and appalled. I have started a fire in the woodstove, and Anna the Poodle is comatose with joy. The light outside is dim; the lamplight inside is beautiful.

Today is my 49th birthday. To celebrate, I am wearing a long black knit skirt, a blue cashmere cardigan, and big earrings because dressing up when I'm home alone is more uplifting than one might think. A month ago I dyed my hair, and my husband still hasn't noticed. I think this is very funny.

My favorite sentence from the book I am currently reading is

"I was walking along the taking line that's the high-water mark that was one of my jobs for LeBrun making sure all the NO TRESPASSING signs were up right where the Authority's property ended I was walking along the beach and I came across this old man dancing practically jumping in and out of this hole in the sand with a fire at the bottom turning over a whole lamb and the smell I thought this is like the wine-dark sea you know from The Odyssey well that's Greek history too it really happened of course it did do you think you could make something like that up?" 

(Thomas Rayfiel, In Pinelight)

Isn't that some kind of sentence? Yesterday I was sitting in a car in the Guilford IGA parking lot, with all the windows rolled down, and the sound of "We Are the Champions" floating over from the athletic fields where Paul was holding his girlfriend's hand after running a 5K (and doing quite well too), and I was waiting for them to finish up with that project, and then I read Tom's sentence and I said, "Whoa," and scribbled the page number down on the bookmark so that I could be sure to remember it forever.

Anyway, today is my birthday, and I will probably spend part of it washing the kitchen floor because Tom (my Tom, not author Tom) spilled something greasy on it while he was cooking me the most amazing birthday dinner yesterday. His homemade lobster ravioli. Wild mushrooms and wine roasted over a wood fire. Skewered cherry tomatoes, shallots, and chunks of green tomatoes grilled over ditto. A tender white cake with thick chocolate frosting. It was a remarkable meal.

I will also spend part of my birthday trying to finish that index I started last week, and setting up parent-teacher conferences, and washing clothes, and reading more of In Pinelight, and picking up kids after play practice, and listening to the Red Sox game, and imagining what it would be like to write a poem. I don't expect to get any closer than that, but it will be as close as I've been in a long, long time.