Karla’s birthday

I pick Karla up after school for our usual assault on the beach. I’m about to tell her to invite friends ..since it’s her birthday ..when she remembers that she already has an invitation to go to a party. It’s Fernanda’s birthday too. Nellie is going .. however, Nellie’s twin sister, Maggie, isn’t coming because she’d rather go shopping with her mother. So I take Karla and Nellie to the party ..then launch my own assault on the beach with Andy, my dog. I watch him chase birds up and down the shore ..see pelicans dive bomb for fish ..listen to a guy named ‘Tim’ tell me how his girlfriend threw him out of the house because members of their church didn’t like his tattoos. I go for a swim then drive back to Laura’s house. Laura is home from work now so we go pick up Karla ..and get a call from Nellie’s mother asking where Maggie is. Laura tells her that we don’t know because I only drove Nellie to the party ..then tells me she’s probably with her boyfriend. We go have a ‘birthday dinner’ at the Vietnamese restaurant ..pho with shrimp and fish. I listen to Karla explain the message behind the movie ‘Before and After’ ..so now I’m anxious to see it. She also wrote down the plot of a movie called ‘Fairy Tale’ ..in case I wanted to use it for one of my goth fairy stories. How thoughtful she is. She's thirteen today.