Warning-housewife-y post to follow

Remember the organization mission? I bought the book that added to the clutter that overwhelms our living space and irritates my irritable spouse? Well, the book, as it turns out, may be more than just more clutter in an ugly orange cover. (I like orange. But not "Books for Dummies" orange. Their graphic designer should be--I don't know. Forced to look at pictures of puppies in flowers and motivational posters with his eyes held open a la Clockwork Orange. But that's mean, and as usual, I digress.)

Today, motivated by avoidance of an even more onerous task, I decided to clean out the bathroom cupboard. This is really almost a closet--six feet high, three feet wide and nearly as deep. It stores our towels, assorted toiletries, lots of OTC medication, random freebies from cosmetics counters and hotel bathrooms, a footbath, a heating pad, a hot water bottle...I could go on, but I'll spare you. With much of our house looking so good (it being on the market and all, and therefore needing to be presentable at the drop of a broker's cell phone) the bathroom, the ugliest room in the house by far, has really been bugging me.

So the book says, when cleaning out a space, here's what you do. Promise yourself at least fifteen minutes with no distractions. (I almost got distracted when I found the magazine basket that we'd shoved into the cupboard at the last minute before the open house--there was a Rosengarten Report in there, after all, but I held myself back.) Get five boxes (I used grocery and garbage bags) and label them--trash, fix it, put away, pass on, mystery. (I love that last label. I could use more stuff for that bag, but that's a subject for another post.) This seemed dopey, a waste of time, but I was following directions today (maybe inserting order into my life as a defense against the stress brought on by the impending State of the Union Address? Bush speaking always makes me twitchy--the H and I dealt with it by ignoring the speech entirely and going out for sushi and sake. Ahhh.) and so I did it. All except for labelling the trash bag, which seemed like overkill.

Then, you take everything out, and one item at a time, place it in the appropriate bag. If you haven't used it in a year, maybe you should throw it away. If it's broken, can you--will you--really fix it? Or is it trash. If you haven't used it in a year, and cannot bear to throw it away (I hate throwing stuff away) can you pass it on to someone else who could use it now? And so on.

Ok, the dopey system--genius.

In twenty minutes, I threw away a giant bag of trash. Loaded a small bag of stuff into my car to give away to a thrift store. Sorted kids' meds from adults', organized my and the H's toiletries into separate sections in the cupboard, put all my hair stuff (I have lots of hair, and therefore lots of stuff) in one drawer, put all my nail polish (for someone who gets manicures about five times a year, I own a shitload of nail polish--what's that about?) Do the rest of you know about this? Is this one of the obvious, un-secrets of the universe that my mother failed to share with me? Have I been going through life like someone with lettue in her teeth while the rest of you point and stare, because I just cannot see my own insufficiency? Ok. I'm breathing.

I found all the extra cotton pads (five sleeves of them), the missing box of Q-Tips that led me to buy a new box last week, three (three!) bottles of a hair conditioner I like (I guess I kept thinking I'd run out and bought more? Who the hell knows.) You get the idea. If I were more of a freak, I'd take a picture of the damn closet and make you look at it. It's that good. But I'm not that bad. Yet. But who knows what will happen when I read Chapter 3.

Where I am these days

At long last, the site I'm writing for has gone live and public. Please, visit culturecloud, not just to see what I'm writing about (it will all seem familiar to you, I'm quite certain) but to help build the site. There are a lot of cool people already writing and posting (not just me!) and you should be there, too.

10,9,8,7...

My life of late has a whole lot of counting down, of numerical series. The last week of December, I decided I'd try to work out 84 times by the end of March. (The fact that that's almost impossible unless I exercise every day, or sometimes twice a day--unlikely--is beside the point. The closer I can get to that number, the happier I will be.) I was clicking along at 4-5 workouts per week, but then the end of last week, and this weekend, things fell apart a bit. Today, if my recollection is correct, got me down to 73. I'm sure I don't need to point out that there are exactly 74 days to go until March 31.

Then there are the house numbers. How many days until we close on the new house? We must close by March 2 to keep our loan, the sellers want us to close around February 5, the ever-accomodating state of New York gives us an automatic 30 day extension on our escrow, as they should, given the two (2) separate 1 (one) percent taxes they will levy upon the purchase price of our new home (let's not discuss that number, shall we?) immediately upon said close.

Ah, but we're not done. What number describes our house's worth? Where does its putative price fall in the spectrum of local housing inventory? There's not much for sale at our price point (again, let's just not go there) which might be good...or, might be bad. Interest rates are low again, though, and that bodes well...And what date will the listing officially begin? When will the house be open? How many of the thousand (yes, you read that right) photographs the lovely architectural photographer took will he use in the house's very own website? Welcome, my dear ones, to the realm of mid-range Los Angeles property sales. It's the wild west, with lots of zeroes.

All numbers. My whole life, at least the part I can remember, which is mostly the part since I started school, I have envisioned the calendar as a physical thing, a visual display of quantitative information la Edward Tufte...my calendar starts with 9, or September, in a nice corner on the right. There's a left turn long about October/November (ten, eleven) moving into twelve, at the upper left corner of the square we're forming. January, one, is around the bend, heading down through February, March, and around April, we start moving across through spring until summer takes us up the right side of the square back to September, where it all starts again. The shape formed by this sequence isn't always precisely square, but it is always precise. I always envision the passage of time along a geometric path, and the beginnings and endings are always the same. But now, with the cliched acceleration of time increasing along with my age, the path through the year feels more and more like a race. Do I need all these numbers to gauge my progress?

Numbers are hugely important to both my children, it seems. Dido is obsessed with age as a relative notion--in the preschool set (maybe more because his school has a multiage classroom) who is older than whom is a great predictor of pecking order and playground power. The Babe is excited by numbers, and starting to learn what they mean, though when it comes to her own identity, her number is fixed: if you ask her how old she is, she will always, always respond "Tree!" No discussion of her upcoming birthday number TWO will change her exuberant reply.

I'm not sure what all this adds up to, if anything. I have a suspicion that the recent imposition of organization and order upon my normally chaotic life (thank you, pending real estate transaction--nothing like having to show your house to strangers and snotty brokers to get you to throw shit out) has something to do with the comfort I am finding in lists and series. Of course, I also worry that as I run from the fear of leaving my home and friends, I am retreating to this world of easy labels and quantifiable achievement in order to hold tears at bay. We'll see.

Attention span = 0

What is with me lately? Before the chaos of the pre-Christmas painting and home repair mania, I felt pretty focused and in control, by which I mean, most of the stuff that needed to get done did, and I managed to do some writing I liked (at the site which I will, I promise, eventually link to here--I think we go live in about two weeks) and feel like mostly, I was paying attention to the people I needed to and even, a bit, to myself. But the last week has felt like a windstorm, one in which I'm hanging on while debris blows past my ears and renders me deaf, blind and dumb. My focus is terrible, I'm having trouble finishing articles I've already started for the other website, and just sitting down and paying attention is excruciating.

At the risk of disappearing into a sinkhole of self-deprecation, I will announce with pride that I exercised five of the last seven days, in spite of a fly-by by the flu over New Year's. Sadly, today's gym experience was cut short when my friend's son, who was having a playdate with the Babe in the glorious free-with-membership childcare at the Hollywood Y, was bitten--in the face--by another child. Oh dear. Ironically, my friend's son (if not my poor friend, who was pretty shaken) was ultimately nonplussed and eager to go back into the playroom, but the Babe was having none of it. So after 25 minutes of cardio, off we all went to the Griffith Park pony rides. "Ha ha" has finally evolved into "horsey" for my uber-verbal little darling, which makes me both sad and proud, and she got her equine fix today, taking eight happy laps around the ring ("Again!" Again!" So sweet.)

I realized a few weeks ago that in order to maintain health (and we'll leave sanity for another day's discussion/post) I need three things, at a minimum: sleep, exercise, and meditation. They work together, meaning, just one of the trio is ok, but when I have all three, all three work better. When I exercise, I sleep more easily, more deeply, and better. Ditto with meditation, though regular, twice a day meditation does seem to produced the effect (advertised by my teachers when I learned the techniques in August) of reducing sleep requirements, and/or, increasing energy levels. When I sleep enough, I eat more healthfully, since sleep deprivation often creates a feeling of hunger (trying to pump up energy by consuming more of it.) Sleep deprivation also, I am certain (and this is my theory, one that I've never read anywhere but after having two kids, and dealing with massive sleep deprivation while they were babies, it makes sense) lowers my metabolic rate, while regular exercise, even the bare minimum (which, sadly, for me, is 45 minutes five to seven times per week) has a remarkable upward push on my metabolism. The meditation gurus swear that meditation does the same; I don't know, but again, there is a real increase in energy when I experience "quality" meditation on a regular, twice a day schedule. Ah. There's a rub. "Regular?" "Twice a day?" I can count the number of times I've had two full, twenty minute meditation sessions in a single day during the last two months on one hand. Sad.

So...I'm going to work on that one. One of the bloggers I most treasure reading, Lisa of A Bird in the Hand, has a journaling project this year--she's got a new journal, in which she'll write or make art on one page, every day (or, at least, that's her goal, and she seems incredibly disciplined, so I expect she'll do it!)--and I'm trying to figure out how to emulate it. My darling friend Dorrie gave me a beautiful gold-bound blank book for my birthday this year, and it's sitting here, next to my bed. I used to start making my lists for the organization project, but maybe I can find a way to expand its use in some Bird-esque way... I'm not much for journaling (um, aren't you blogging? isn't that the same thing, but lazier, because it's on the computer? Yep. Ok, maybe I do like keeping a journal...but apparently only a public one. Private journals (and this is just me, I know they're incredibly important to many, many people, including people I adore) always seemed so navel-gazing to me. I mean, I wasn't that interested in all that self-examination. Of course, then I went into analysis, and....

And, now I ramble. Publicly. On my blog. But at least I was able to write this entire post without getting distracted, clicking away to Defamer, or Perez Hilton, or The Superficial, or The Wednesday Chef. So maybe I'm making progress after all..

Still on the post Christmas exhalation

I had an idea last night for a post that I'm sure was absolutely brilliant. Unfortunately, it's evaporated. This happens to me a lot, though less so lately; the less so having more to do with the lifting of depression than some inspired move towards organization in my life. I'm working on the latter. Getting ready--or, more accurately, fearing getting ready--for the big move has pushed me to begin packing (my kitchen was dismembered anyway, so why not put the things we rarely use into boxes instead of putting them away?) and to begin doing my own personal deaccessioning. (Look it up. It's a word I learned my junior or senior year of college, when I took one of my favorite courses of all time, museum curatorship. The teacher, Susan Casteras (you will have to scroll down in the link to get to her) was fabulous, and I got in touch with her a couple of years ago via email to tell her how much her course changed my life. Didn't create a purpose for my existence or anything, but forever changed the way I experience art in museums, the way it's organized, explained and hung. As usual, I digress.)

Anyway, as part of the pre-move get rid of stuff I don't use, need or want project, I bought more clutter, namely, this, which I spied on the shelf of a dear friend who, while not, I suppose, impeccably organized, manages to gracefully keep multiple family, career and friend balls floating in mid-air. And her husband, like mine, prefers a clutter-free, minimal-possession world. It's well-written, somewhat to my surprise, as I had never jumped onto the Idiot's Guide juggernaut before now.

more to come...

Late, just like my Christmas cards

If you're thinking, hey, we got a card last year, where's our card from the O family this year, rest assured, you probably haven't been cut from the list (or, the loose amalgamation of thoughts kept only in my head about who to send cards to. There was a list once, but it disappeared along with most of my other organizational capability when my second kid was born. Sorry...) but rather, will be receiving your card, with any luck, in time for the new year's eve traditional disappointment. I do my best, which is often not quite good enough. What can I say. In the meantime (imagine me singing here:)

Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail, too,
And God bless you, and send you
A Happy New Year,
And God send you a Happy New Year.

Lurky friends, please say hello

So, one of the things about having a site meter is that when I check my stats, even if there's no referral for a visitor (that is, they didn't click through to me from another site that the meter captured) I can often see where they are located. So, for example, I know a couple of people very dear to me in spite of not much regular contact over the last few years have been reading. If you live in an unusual place, I know who you are. So say hello. I miss you, and would love to hear your news, or your comments on mine.

xo

Just to clarify...

The previous post was from Friday night, but didn't post until just now. So I am not sitting at home in a darkened room with my kids, getting sloshed on eggnog, in the middle of the day. No. I save that for the end of the day, of course. (And, truthfully, I didn't get sloshed. Just a little more relaxed than I was previously. Later, I'll post the pictures of my house in its current state, and you will understand.)

Is it drinking alone if my children are here?

Happy holidays, I say, in spite of the chaos that reigns like mean old King Herod in my happy house. That's eggnog in the picture to your left, healthily spiked with Knob Creek Bourbon and Myers Dark Rum. You need both; trust me on this. Bourbon alone tastes too mean; rum too tropical, but together, they are, like Little Bear's porridge to Goldilocks, just right. And you can use supermarket eggnog with no ill effect (and no risk of salmonella)--in our neck of the woods, that mean's the good stuff from Broguiere's Dairy, in lovely old-fashioned glass bottles.

Be afraid.

Every once in a great while, like bloggers everywhere, I check my stats. They're not that impressive, frankly; my readership is small (but loyal, it seems--thank you!) and has grown a bit lately, thanks to NaBloPoMo and my program of self-outing. (Apparently I'm becoming more of an exhibitionist in my advancing years. You'd think the H would like that, but not so much. That's not one of his fetishes--when it comes to being watched, he's a bit of a prude. But I digress.)

Anyway, procrastinating today (I need to get to work on my paying job, not to mention my current career in home remodeling--remember, we list in less than three weeks!) I went to my little site meter. It turns out that more than one person in the last two days found me by googling "Lindsay Lohan." Now, that's sad on a couple of counts. First, who actually needs to Google L.Lo. to find her? She's as ubiquitous as dust in my kitchen. (It's being painted, which means first, it's being sanded, which means first, everything had to come out of the cabinets and be piled hither and thither on kitchen table, dining room table, dining room floor--you get the idea. It's so sad you have to laugh, and I have pictures to prove it.) Second, if you google her, and get to me--well, that's just wrong. I am the least celeb-focused internet presence I can think of, except maybe Mieke and Alyssa. So for those of you who've come looking for Lindsay's manifesto, or Brit-Brits hootchie, I am sorry to disappoint. Well, the hootchie-hunters, anyway.

The check's in the mail

We did it. Signed the contract, paid our deposit. Escrow begins any minute. [deep breath in. hold. breathe out.]

Maybe I need a paper bag.

Mostly, I feel excited. Occasionally, I feel adrift. The H's moods are up and down (this is not new, nor is it caused solely by cross country relocation. He's an...emotional...guy.) The friends are either laughing or shaking their heads.

I am going to sleep.

BTW, early next month, the site I'm writing for will go public. You might think I'm more interesting when you read what I'm publishing over there. (Or not.)

xx

With the illusion of readership comes the illusion of responsibility

I have been bad, bad, bad about posting, and yet, having outed this blog quite a bit over the last few weeks, occasionally intentionally and then often not so intentionally, I do feel some responsiblity (what? to my public? please....) to post. Anyway. I do want to get in the habit of posting because I think after we move this will be a good way for me to keep in touch with friends in L.A., and give them a window into our wacky new life. (Please chime in if you think that's completey obnoxious. It's my week for hard criticism from people I love, so jump right on in--the water's been a little acid, but it hasn't burned my skin off, yet....and that's enough on THAT subject.)

Our house (in L.A.) is mired in the death rattle of polish up brush up prior to being listed for sale in January. At the moment, my kitchen is completely disassembled, as we are having the cabinets (and walls) repainted, inside and out. Have you ever done this? It's SO MUCH FUN. You have to try it. No,really. There's nothing like seeing your children crawling around the kitchen floor with their heads under plastic sheeting covering the piles of food removed from the pantry, looking for snacks. If that's not a holiday moment, I don 't know what is.

As to the farm which might as well be in Africa--we sign and send the contracts and final installment of our deposit TODAY. Did I mention, TODAY? To make me feel better about this, tell me what you think of the picture.

BTW, has anyone been following the Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Nicole Richie cultural multi-train collision/derailment/massive explosion? Who are these girls? And when, oh when, will we stop caring?

Where the hell I've been

So, not only did I not finish NaBloPoMo thanks to my netless adventure to upstate NY at the end of the cursed month o' posting, I've also disappeared from here since my return, just at the point when I finally outed myself to a bunch of friends (hi, friends!) as a blogger. (Good tactic, no? Reveal the existence of the blog, but then fail to post, so they turn away, bored.)

Actually, I've been busy writing elsewhere. I've been hired as a writer and editor for a soon-to-launch website , and it's been sucking up what little free/writing (sadly, for me, they tend to be the same thing) time I can find. As soon as the site goes public, meaning, loses its password protection and eliminates the few remaing bugs, I'll have a link up here. It's a pretty innovative approach to social networking, and I'm enjoying my work there. Mostly, I'm writing about food (and you know I love that) but also about literature, parenting, and whatever else strikes me.

But it does kill the blog energy a bit. So here's the update. We are buying the farm (see picture at the bottom of the site.) These are the things that scare me about it: debt (for a month or two, hopefully not more, we're going to own two houses. This is not something I have ever aspired to, my preppy education notwithstanding.) Small town personal politics. Everyone, where we're going, seems to know and have an opinion about, everyone else. It's a little bit like high school, but with tractors. I find that a bit intimidating. Tractors. Mowing. Land to be maintained, cajoled, probably not tamed. Moving. I hate packing, and unpacking is almost as bad. Leaving my dear, dear friends, who better keep reading this blog so they have some faint idea of where and who I am when I leave behind the life I know and mostly love.

Day 28 --Wherefore art thou, Fiammo?

Or, Bad Mommy. You see, while nursing a martini tonight to dull the pain and anxiety of the possibly protracted unpleasantness we may soon endure, and that I cannot write about, I inadvertently ignored the fact that half our doors and windows are propped open due to the repainting of the outside of our house now suffocating all of us with oil-based fumes. And the cat, the joy of our family, seized the opportunity for adventure (poor thing, he's been trying for months and months.)

Breaking news....he's back. Crisis averted, at least for now. I am off to read Katherine White, on gardening in New England.

Day 27 -- Dear G*d, the end is nigh

Even not blogging every day, this blogging every day is killing me. Everything I want to say has already been said.

Have I mentioned, however, that I get to take a flight, by myself, on Wednesday night? And spend the following day more or less by myself? I love my family, but to be alone? Oh bliss.

Do you think that's odd?

Day 25 -- Beaten by a smokin' turkey

Best intentions aside, the last two days have kicked my not-insubstantial behind. Two days in a row, we've had large family gatherings at our house, first my husband's family on his mom's side, and last night, his family on his step mother's side. Never the twain shall meet (hey, it's only been 38 years since his mom and dad divorced, and his dad is dead, but why let a little time, distance or death stand in the way of dislike, disdain or dysfunction?) Actually, the most ironic thing is that his stepmother no longer speaks to most of the family members who joined us last night (I believe her youngest brother is still in her good graces, but none of her other siblings, their children, etc.) so probably, my mother in law's sisters, who celebrated the actual holiday with us on Thursday, would have been just fine. In any case, for us this year, Thanksgiving was the holiday so nice we ate it twice, and I, unlike my turkey(s), am fried.

Since I never got around to posting the menu, you can view it here; it's essentially the same, though since I didn't make roast turkey this year, and my aunt-in-law was bringing a (delicious) mushroom bread pudding, I bailed on making stuffing. I always insist that stuffing is my favorite part of the Thanksgiving carb & tryptophan orgy, but I didn't miss it. It's an awful lot of work (all prep, but still) so it may disappear for a while. I also added the miraculous no-knead bread, which is like kitchen alchemy. My sister-in-law pronounced it as good as the bread in Italy, and she should know, as she's there for work all the time. The H's uncle made fun of me until he tried it, and shockingly, his wife emailed for the recipe first thing Friday morning. So do yourself and your loved ones a favor, and make it. It's ungodly good, and so easy as to be embarrassing.

Thanks to all the partying, my house is full of half eaten pies and dirty champagne glasses, and I feel like I may never get all the cleaning up done...but it was worth it. Dido loved re-meeting his five year old cousin (they met when they were three, but didn't remember) and the Babe was entranced with her fifteen year old cousin, who gamely toted her around all evening long. The H has been semi-estranged from this step family, who were a hugely important part of his childhood, for nearly a decade now, so the reconnect, especially as we contemplate leaving town, was both joyful and poignant. Hopefully, the doors will stay open for years to come, and maybe, someday, even his step mother will be able to join in the festivities.

Day 23 -- Oops. So much for that menu

I got so consumed last night with the pureeing and the mixing and the steeping and the stirring that I fell into bed without so much as a flicker of a NaBloPoMo thought.

I'll write about the food another time; it was good, not my best, but good. But the day was one of the lesser Thanksgivings in my life, with lots of anxiety, mine and others', and a wee bit of drama I could have easily lived without. By the end, my feet hurt, my eyes were tired, and I just wanted to lay on the couch and cover my face with my hands. But baby girl was having none of it, and she crawled right up on top of me, her face still smeared with chocolate from the chocolate pecan pie.

"More pie?" she asked brightly. It wasn't so bad after all.

Day 21 -- I almost forgot

Curse wicked Mrs. K and her nefarious NaBloPoMo. I must interrupt my internet Christmas shopping for my short people to say...nothing. At the end of a shockingly productive day, I have nothing for you, oh people of the 'sphere. Tomorrow, I will put up my Thanksgiving menu, which promises to be delectable. In the meantime, enjoy the picture of Dido at his first ever horseback riding lesson, aboard the lovely Caspian horse Jafar, and g'nite.

Day 20 -- The work of being

My shrink told me today that I resist "doing the work" (her words) and "the process" of my analysis because I want her to play the role of my mother and provide me with all the answers. (My mother has an annoying habit which I have inherited: she has a compulsion to have the last, and definitive, word. If she doesn't know something, it cannot be true. This ranges from secrets of the universe to whether or not cabs in Los Angeles accept credit cards for payment. I'm serious.)

After I got over a great deal of annoyed harrumphing (and I still am kind of annoyed, but that's another subject) I got to thinking about what she might really mean. Is it the hallmark of maturity? wholeness? good sense? to realize that the only way to answer questions in your life is to find the answers yourself, rather than asking someone else to offer advice? Or is that a load of bunk designed to keep me in her very expensive clutches?

On some level, I think to know one's own mind is a sign of being a fully realized (eek, that sounds so ridiculous new agey) person. On the other hand--is it wrong to ask for answers from others? Is it wrong to ask how to handle a situation in your life? You have to go on living in the real world, not isolated inside your own thoughts and feelings. This whole line of thought, quite frankly, used to give me a headache. Now, I'm not sure. I'm not sure she's wrong, exactly, but nor am I sure that she's not full of it.

Day 19 - Perfect weekend

It has been a long, long time since I've felt, on a Sunday night, that I had a perfect weekend. Yesterday, I took the kids all morning so the H could continue to plug away at the never ending script. Someday, it will be finished, and we will all rejoice. In the meantime, I took Dido and the Babe to his last soccer game of the season (8:30 a.m., thank you very much) and then the three of us went to the Elves' Faire (yes, you read that right) an annual fundraiser for a local Waldorf school. I had never been before, and didn't know really what to expect, but wanted to go because a) other parents (not parents at the school) had told me how fun it was and b) I was doing reconnaissance to see just how far down the Scientology cultometer scale the place felt to me, since one of our private school options in our new home town will be a Waldorf school. I didn't gather much intelligence, since the one person I grilled was someone I already know a bit, and who seems entirely normal and thoughtful and seems to parent in a slightly more progressive but ultimately kind of similar way to me. (Or maybe, I did gather intelligence, and that's what it is.) Dido liked it because in one of the areas set up around the (beautiful) campus was an enormous assortment of wooden toy weapons (shields, swords, daggers, slingshots and the like--no guns) for sale. Weapons? He's in. Ah. As I told the H when we got home, apparently Waldorf (which has a pretty strict ban on TV and other electronic media) is a-okay with weaponry as long as it's wood, not plastic. Anyway...afterwards, we hit the Pie N Burger (a must-visit if you're ever in Pasadena; it's divine) for lunch, and then headed home for a brief rest before going en famille to our horseback riding lessons (again, getting ready for the big adventure.) Nothing could have been sweeter than the sight of my big boy sitting tall on a beautiful (albeit tiny) horse. We all (except the Babe, who watched) rode, groomed the horses, had a ball. We hit one of our favorite Mexican places for an early family dinner and then came home to get ready for the party-that-stole-my-ability-to-post (see yesterday's entry.)

Today--morning with the kids, at the Hollywood Farmers' Market, then visiting dear friends, then a birthday party, and then home to clean up and go to bed. I'm not sure whether it was the weekend that was so great or the lifting of the cloud over my head, but either way, I'm counting my blessings.

And I know, no one cares what I had for lunch or the minutiae of my family weekend events...but I want to remember, so here it is.