There is this couch I've been going and sitting on where magic happens. A magic so magical that even the light and sound of Extreme Dodgeball being splashed all over it can do little to stop the swirling magicness. A magic so magical it can magically make the word magicness.

I love magic.

That place, that girl, is magical.

If only I were a magician.

I didn't talk to a single person outside Connecticut yesterday on my birthday. And it was nobody's fault but my own. I was gone. Predisposed. And I only assume they'll all forgive me because, of all the days this year, or any year, the 14th of November is mine. And I split the day selfishly even between an upstate waterfall -my first waterfall- and K's couch. And I'm not sure which was lovelier.

It was a two-hour, beautiful, bowl-passing drive to Kent Falls, and not one of us brought a camera. It was snow everywhere when we got there, the longest stretch of it I've ever walked. I started to notice the sound it makes when it mushes and pushes away from your boot. That sound, is a cool one. The water came splashing down a quarter mile of mountain, which we walked to the top of, stopping randomly to watch the falls from different trail-sanctioned angles. The sound of it made me want to curl up and sleep.

I can't sufficiently describe the outdoors up here. The nature. It's the stuff I've always been familiar with because of movies and TV. People really have white Christmases up here. They rake leaves and scrape snow. I watched kids make a snowman yesterday. I've never seen that.

The other day I convinced Christian, in the cold pitch of night, to dart across the lawn and, our bodies torpedoes, slam headfirst into a pile of Autumn leaves. First time I've ever done that.

So I had a great birthday. And I love everyone at home who tried to call. I even love the people who didn't try to call. After the falls it was a birthday dinner of Chinese food from some hyped hole-in-the-wall in Westport. Then I went to K's to watch The Robert Cake and my already long birthday- which started in an Irish Pub at midnight, twenty-some hours earlier- only got better as it pressed toward the 15th.

I don't have so many great birthdays.

This one was.