I haven’t looked in the mirror in a while, but I’m sure I have that singular pasty, haggard look of someone who’s been in the library all day.

(That reminds me that the other evening Sarah came home and I was still sitting in the very same spot she’d left me in hours earlier. In polka dots and plaid, I was hunched over at the table, one foot on the chair, my chin on my knee. There may have been birds making a nest in my hair. “I know I look completely batty,” I said. Because Sarah was brought up in Oslo and London, and has good posture from being a dancer, and is proper and kind, she said, “You look just like someone who’s both sick and studying.” Anyway, it’s fine, these days it doesn't matter what I look like because I am an Intellectual.)

But freedom calls, and freedom tastes like a homemade meal, because I am heading to dinner with Kate B. Maybe a couple of weeks ago, Kate B., whom I hadn’t seen or spoken to in years, e-mailed me to announce her coming to town for the weekend. “FYI,” she wrote, “I got divorced, and ordained, and am now seeing a woman.” Tonight she is cooking at her friend’s place where she’s staying, and I will bring, because I think her story deserves it, a lemon tart from the Silver Moon Bakery.

Meanwhile, it may or may not be a problem that I have just looked outside and discovered that it has started to snow again. Of course, like stubborn and continuing incompatibility with the elements, I am in blue herringbone kneesocks and open-toe heels.