A week's end collection of trinkets

Cryptic illustration, that requires reading all the way to bottom to understand

This is why I like Sunday morning. I'm on the couch with Z. David is at the round table in the art/music/dishes/piles of paper room. Jazz is playing on the computer. O is upstairs maybe still asleep, maybe clandestinely playing with an electronic device. What now?

Blog?
Yoga?
Call my mom?
Work on script?
Work on book?
Read for pleasure?
Read for school?
Prep for school?
Prep for writers group?
Do the crossword?
Plan menus?
Bills & budgeting?
Tidy & clean?

Later I have a gift card from a fancy lady store to spend when I take Z to violin.

Karen blogged. She blogged about not overthinking things. I think this is good advice. I've been wanting to blog since school was back in session. Wishing I could figure out just which sliver of the day to jam it into. I collect shiny things mentally, on notepads, on the funky "notebook" program on my electronic device. Each Most mornings when I wake up I spend a few minutes jotting down the stuff that is rolling around in my head (this is a good and successful habit), sometimes I exercise. At night I have lingering school work and I need time to just be with my kids and there are conversations with David to be had and sometimes maybe even a few minutes of reading because I like to read, reading is important.

A selection of shiny things I might have blogged about this week:

The strange pattern on the sidewalks near school when the weather warmed earlier in the week. Brownish slate slabs had been overlaid with fine dirt and fallen leaves then thin sheets of ice that grew in intricate crystals, feathering and branching. The when it all melted away, taking the leaves with it, the smooth rock seemed etched with a complex brown on brown lace, like a topographical map, rivers and tributaries and mountains and morains, curving and branching and tumbling and rippling, like photographs from orbit of the surface of a new planet. When the sidewalk shifted into newer, cement slabs, the pattern was merely the shadow outline of maple leaves -- pretty, but lacking in the mysterious random order of the etchings on slate.

The clouds on Friday afternoon at dusk when I left school, after a solid week, after a happy hour, after a good talk with a colleague, looking out over the playing fields into the western sky. Layers and layers of clouds, white, gray, and silver, rolling in banks larger than you think the sky could hold, all illuminated from within by the crazy pinky orange light of the setting sun.

The feeling on Saturday morning of seeing my own house in the thin light of dawn. It is light enough that I don't think to flip the switch before I go downstairs for coffee, but still dim enough that things haven't taken on the solidity of day. From the stairs down from the landing, I can see into two rooms. The couch, the chairs, the tables, the books. The walls that contain it all. The floors glowing eerily in the grayness. These are my rooms. This is my place. Here.

Reading: Stuff for writers group, stuff for school (starting to prep Arabian Nights), stuff about creativity (some neat titles; I'll try to record them soon), wishing I could read the John Green I started but not finding time, incrementally getting through an article about a street dancer in a back copy of the New Yorker, wishing I could just read and read and read. So much to read.

Writing: Teensy bits of the book. And I need to do a final edit of the end of my piece in the group-written Seven Ages before it goes into rehearsal.

Dinner: Last night was at my in-laws, a fine casserole with big chunks of mushroom in it. Friday was a hurried, late boughten meal after soccer. Thursday Z helped me make the cheesy rice of the century. Wednesday was ... pasta? Tuesday (watching Agents of Shield as a family, because that's how we roll, like it or not) was pizza - 1 red sauce with cheese, 1 white with chicken, broccoli raab, and almonds. Monday was a bacon-cheddar-broccoli quiche, made because Sarah had given us a pie crust we need to use.

Soundtrack: In general, I don't mind ads on the free Pandora. I am getting sick of the fact that the only organization that seems to be paying them for adspace is some obnoxious pro-fracking group.

Earlier this week, I made these notes about music in my morning pages: "And music, I think I was thinking of a lot of things -- 'Soul Finger' and 'Mansion on the Hill' and O getting a listening list of classic rock from his new drum teacher ... Cream's version of  'Crossroads' on the itunes morning.'

Random thing: I love the rabbit holes of the interwebz. Idly searching for some possibly interesting tidbit about the pink shirt Finny wears in John Knowle's A Separate Peace (from what I understand it was likely a particular Brooks Brothers issue), I stumbled upon the world of trad menswear blogs, like this one. You didn't know such a thing exists, did you? Well, maybe one or two of you did ... but really, the intense debate about the minutiae of collar styles in the comments stream is dizzying.

"To clarify: I never said my stance on OCBDs under a formal/business suit (or any fashion related positions, for that matter) was anything but my opinion; an educated, well-defined opinion based on the origins and traditions associated with the style….but, an opinion – not a ‘rule’ – nontheless. Ironically, if anyone seems to believe in rules related to OCBDs, it’s many of you (including @CC)….as you all seemed to recoil at GQ’s (and my) suggestion that OCBDs might not be appropriate in formal settings. Treason! Glenn O’Brien is a fake! Look at the J.Press Web site! And so on." [credit to commenter AEV, November 12, 2013 @ 8:39 am]