I am hoping that Ruckus and Anna become accustomed to the autumn time change because what's the point of getting to sleep in for an extra hour if one has to spend it fending off the importunities of pets who are convinced that it's time for me to get up and let them outside? This accounts for why I am drinking bad coffee and writing to you at 6 a.m. on a Sunday.

On the vague off-chance that you might have been planning to attend next weekend's two-day workshop at the Barred Owl Retreat, I need to let you know that the sponsor has suddenly had to postpone it till the spring. No date is set, but I will keep you posted. Thus, instead of sitting in a chair and talking about books, I will be stacking firewood and driving kids to theater rehearsal. But that will be fine. I've been having a good time with firewood this year. Tom cuts up the logs, and then the poodle and I go out and help him haul them to the truck . . . back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. It has been companionable, out there under the woodpeckers and the sudden showers and the sifting leaves. And I like to be almost 50 years old and still able to carry 80-pound logs out of the forest.

"Katie was big and strong, and she could do a lot of things." [First line of my favorite girl-power children's book: Katie and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton, a story about a snowplow, published in 1943]

"[Nora Ephron is] appalled when [journalist] Jan Morris admits that after male-to-female sex change surgery, she voluntarily assumed the role of the helpless woman, unable to open bottles or lift heavy objects." [From Francine Prose's NY Review of Books review of an Ephron omnibus]

Other plans for the week: Emily Dickinson's Black Cake. Yes, it's that time of year again. I acquired all of my dried-fruit ingredients yesterday (cranberries, currants, citron, golden raisins) but, oddly, couldn't find brandy. Something in that recipe always gives me trouble. It's very Emily-like in that way.