A good day: I moved a giant editing project off my desk and then spent the rest of the day hanging out with a friend, making pesto, going for a long walk, drinking rose, welcoming a favorite young person, enjoying a noisy impromptu dinner. . . . It's so sweet to sit outside in the shade drinking ice tea and trimming green beans and stripping piles of basil and talking about this and that with a favorite person.

Today, maybe a bit more of the same, and then back to the next giant editing pile. Thunderstorms are still in the forecast, but I'll believe that when I see it.

I'm glad to be reading Wharton's House of Mirth. The character of Lily Barth seems to be shaping up as complex and not altogether sympathetic, which I like. She's a trained gold digger, on the hunt for a rich husband, but seems to be having second thoughts about the project.

I'm also mourning Toni Morrison, a writer who had a massive influence on me when I was a teenager--especially her novel Song of Solomon. I was overwhelmed, mesmerized, ignited by her language. And reading Beloved about killed me. I was a new mother by that time, and the notion of having to murder a child to save it was like a stake in my heart. Along with Updike's Rabbit, Run (which has a terrible scene of accidental baby drowning), Beloved is a tale too close to my bones. Someday, I might be able to reread it. I know it's worth a few more nightmares. That's the thing about Morrison's work: the tragedies are the masteries.