Good Friday Eve

This high holiday season has meant so little to me. I feel like my family has become just so...secular.

Yes, we're particularly busy and preoccupied this year. And maybe this just proves somehow that it's only been my pushing and prodding and bringing out the little ceramic bunny decorations half-way through Lent that has ever meant Easter was coming in our home. Or maybe it's just the the girls are older. Or that, for the first time I can remember, we have no plans - AT ALL - for Sunday.

The lack of familial pressure to prepare or go to a breakfast or lunch is a relief (if I can stop myself from feeling any filial guilt about it). But I'm saddened by the loss of celebration and ritual all the same.

We plan to have young friends staying over tomorrow and I expect to have the girls decorate eggs. Maybe that, or reading some e.e.cummings, will help.

April and the Wood Burning Stove is Still My BFF

What's better than curling up in the red couch next to the fire at the end of a hard day?
Um...nothing.

I May Be Slow, But At Least I'm Expensive

...it's kind of like that. Except that I'm impatient. So impatient, in so many ways. I don't wait for people to finish their sentences. I don't wait for people to catch up. I don't like waiting at all. I've often joked that patience is one of the big lessons I'm supposed to learn during this lifetime. My mother always ran late, my husband used to always leave me waiting. My second child is very, very slow. And I slam instead of sipping. I walk fast. I'm not good with just letting time pass.

Except that I remember being something very like patient when it came to petting zoos as a child. I would wait for a fawn to approach me. Pointlessly, for minutes, while my mother suggested we move on to the next thing. Or (we have video footage of this), I would follow a peacock all over, hoping it would be so kind as to drop a tail feather for me to collect.

But this wasn't patience, really. It was stubbornness. Or perhaps pride. Or some combination of the two.

You see? One character flaw masking another. Might come in handy to remember and instill on some unsuspecting fictional player in a novel.

Advancing at the Retreat

Just arrived home from spending about 8 hours writing and dining with fellow writers at Julia's parent's Stinson Beach house. I progressed further than I have in months (years, even) with my old Welsh novel. It was a productive time following a busy morning at work, and sandwiched between long drives: on the way out, in Mill Valley, I was rear-ended, but it seems that the cars and I sustained no damage (except a bit of a headache for me), and on the way back, it was a long and windy road in the dark.

But I'm home safe, and sound, having heard a very important quote on the way back from Diane Ackerman. Michael Krasny quoted her from her NY Times column as saying, "In the end, what we pay the most attention the most defines us, and how we choose to spend our lives transforms us." To which she replied:

It does. So you need to ask yourself, "With what do you want to spend the irreplaceable hours of your life?" Because paying attention programs the brain, and makes it easier and easier and easier to slip into those little habits, those palatial ruts, that we love so much. And they can be good or bad, depending."

I somehow didn't know of this woman before tonight. How is that? I think I have a new hero.

April Again

National Poetry month. Again. And Spring. Today, no rain.

I'm grateful for the renewal of energy that comes for me each Spring. Just when I thought the drive to accomplish anything beyond mere survival was gone for good, I have a day like this, where I am able to focus on some things that have long awaited my attention.

It felt satisfying to get a few things done: dog to dog park then to pet store for a thorough bath, pet food purchasing, squaring away travel plans, working on the Human Race campaign for S., exploring the purchase of a url for D's new business, a long run at the gym (6 miles, only .5 of which was walked), returning of video, mailing of letter, bargain grocery shopping - so important to check those expiration dates! - a little weeding, a little laundry, dishes, re-laying the butcher paper in the hallway which now constitutes our flooring, down time with the girls watching a movie, fire starting, blogging.

And I feel the day was about 5 hours too short, and that just one more weekend day at home would be lovely. Serves me right for working 4 hours yesterday.

But tomorrow promises more time to write, at least. I'll go to bed tonight thinking about my "Welsh novel" so that by the time I get to writer pal Julia's retreat in Stinson, I'll be focused and can join the group of novelists hitting the ground running, as it were. I could be working on a book of poetry too, but I think for a long period of time, the novel would be good. Although I may work on poetry here & there too.

But if I don't go to bed now, it'll mean too little sleep for the long day ahead. Forcing myself to wrap it up and call it done.