I have a few thoughts just here and there

It is my birthday. Last year I couldn't think of any characters my age, but this year I am thirty-nine, which makes me as old as Jack Benny. It is a sobering thought that when Tom Lehrer was my age, he had been using that line about Mozart for two years. Actually, I am now as old as Peter Wimsey when he met Harriet Vane. I think it would be nice if things went as well as the rest of that quartet from here.

I have no idea how to celebrate a birthday this year, but I had a card from selkie and a card from my godchild and a card and a gift from my godmother—jewelry of green tourmaline—to start it off with. One cat watched me from the dresser and one cat curled against my hip. spatch has promised me sea. We'll figure something out.

One day I jumped and I stayed up late

For reasons primarily relating to a decision on the part of the City of Somerville to begin concrete-cutting construction directly in front of our building at eight o'clock sharp this morning, we ended up taking a rain check on the sea this afternoon and went to a river instead. Specifically, with the connivance of some masks and my mother's car, we went to the Old North Bridge across the Concord River and wandered around the grounds of the early twentieth-century mansion that now serves as the park's visitor center, autumn-wild gardens and all. It was cold and sun-setting and wonderful. All photographs taken by spatch unless I don't appear in them.

(  You hang in the air with me at our terminal velocity. )

We made it out of the park just in time for sunset and met my parents for dinner from—not at; it will be some time before anyone in my family feels comfortable with restaurants in person—Highland Fried, which thankfully I thought of calling when their online ordering service claimed they were closed. They were not closed. They were irritated with their online ordering service, but cheerfully furnished us with pork ribs and fried chicken and collards and coleslaw and mashed potatoes and chicken gravy and key lime pie and peach cobbler and my father who has never lost his Southern foodways was very happy and so was everyone else, especially me who has missed this restaurant for months. Since my birthday observed is still to be celebrated on Sunday when my brother's family can make it, I was not expecting the presents of either Wade Miller's Devil May Care/Sinner Take All (1950/1960), which look fantastically pulp, or the polished weight of labradorite flashing blue-green as phytoplankton or the northern lights. spatch got me the digital single of Stopwalk's "Homosexual Art Attack," which I have played at least half a dozen times in a row. Autolycus is asleep on my lap.

I am still having a great deal of difficulty with the future, but I am definitely glad to have been here for today.