I like to call it Tuednesday ... and I like it balanced

Thank you, Charlene! 

Tuesday was another long day at work, which means another day when my noticing of the world in the way I hope to record here is diminished. It was a good day. I got to meet and hear Loretta Ross (her biography is really pretty amazing).

Wednesday was less long, and also pretty good.

Maybe what I need is for someone else to balance all my packages
(photo found on the Brooklyn Limestone blog)

But working long days diminishes my sense of balance. I used to think balance was a state of stasis: you find the balanced position and maintain it rigidly (not balance). Then I thought that balance was like a picture of someone holding a ridiculous number of packages, teetering and tottering under the weight but making the adjustments to keep them all from falling (not balance). I have come to believe that balance is more about picking things up and putting them down, sometimes holding several things at once and teetering a bit, but really more about being more focused with each parcel in turn. Balance happens within a day but also over the course of several ... one hopes.

Reading: At lunch Tuesday, I picked up a copy of Glamour that promised to tell me what guys thought of me based on my shoes. What was funny, and sort of charming, about this feature is that it featured four very different shoes - pink platform ankle booties, patterned rubber boots, fringed suede moccasin boots, and futuristic rubber and plastic fetish sandals - and had quotes from guys as to why each of these indicated the wearer was someone socially and sexually attractive.

Wednesday, I took some time after dropping the kids at school to sit in a coffee shop and read the Nalo Hopkinson (balance) and read again for 20 minutes while O was doing his school reading.

Writing: Working through notes from writers group.

Dinner: Tuesday, late evening supper of baked acorn squash with butter and brown sugar and rice pilaf (ordered by me, executed by David ... balance).
Wednesday, mac-n-cheese-in-a-hurry, but then fed spicy guacamole and olives and bread with turkey and cheese at a meeting in a zero-energy house. (balance?)

Soundtrack: Finally heard a song by Grizzly Bear that I was aware was by Grizzly Bear. Sounded OK, but I will curmudgeonly comment that I don't see what the big deal is. (Did you know that the Latin name for the animal is ursus arctos horribilis? I saw one on a hillside in Alaska on my honeymoon.)

Also, O singing "I'm dreaming of a white February, like no other wa-one ... No, no, no. I'm dreaming of a white May-ay, like there's never been before ... Wait, no. I'm dreaming of a white almond bark with no peanuts in it all." (Ever faithful to his peanut allergic sister.)

Random thing: The coffee shop I stopped in today was the Phoenix on Coventry. I was disappointed to see they had changed the door to the bathroom since I last peed there. Now it is just a generic hollow core thing. But in days of old it was a wooden door, the grain of which on the inside look liked a cloaked vampire/bat/fox/devil figure. I loved that image.

The orchid that Kim's mom gave me as a present when she came for dinner an entire year ago is BLOOMING AGAIN!!!