About how good an ordinary day can be

It's when you get to sleep in a little, but not too much, 'cause while you need a little extra sleep, you don't want to waste the day.
It's when your husband goes outside to get the paper, then goes to get you pancakes and scrambled eggs, which means you don't have to cook.
It's when you have a minute to get your weekend chores started, like the laundry, and linen-changing, but know you've got more fun things to do.
It's when you go to a basketball game with a gym full of parents and kids, and not one person gets mad at a referee or a child. And your grandson makes some good passes and scores some baskets and, best of all, has a big smile on his face practically the entire time.
It's when you go out for lunch with your family and the two-year-old sleeps through the whole thing, and the four-year-old swipes the fries and eats all the pepperoni and wears her new purse over her shoulder the whole time, and it's full of Pokemon figures, her sparkly hand lotion, and a pretend hair dryer.
It's when you take an hour or so to help your daughter get her house picked up for a get-together in the evening, and you listen to Little Einsteins while you pick up toys and put clothes away. And you talk about what the kids are doing and which friends are coming over and "where do you want me to put THIS?"
It's when you go home and get some more chores down, like even MORE laundry!, and the dishes, and sweep the kitchen, and vacuum, and put away all the papers on the kitchen table that seem to appear magically EVERY WEEK!
It's when your son and daughter-in-law and baby Kenna come over for a "slumber party," and Kenna is in fine almost-two-year-old form, using the sectional sofa as her runway/trampoline. And you babysit for a bit after she goes to bed and her parents go to meet some old friends for a birthday celebration. And you watch I.U. basketball, under a cloud of embarrassment all week, play a great game and beat Michigan State.
It's when you go to bed, tired, but suddenly aware you've had a Saturday about as good as an ordinary Saturday gets.
How about you? How was your Saturday?

About when you go to New York City

When you go to New York City, maybe you become someone that usually you're not. Maybe you're better looking, or cooler, or smarter, or even younger.
Maybe, when you go to New York City, you decide to change your name, because when your name is "Cathy," everyone knows you are a middle-aged woman born in the '50s, or so. And that's okay, but maybe you just feel like being someone different. Or maybe I mean better, or maybe, more interesting.
So maybe, before you go to New York City, you decide that your new nickname will be "Kit," because that seems maybe cooler and hipper and, you know, sophisticated.
And maybe your family thinks this is a hoot when you tell your plan, and your son says, "Mom, it's just really lame to give yourself a nickname."
Lame exercise, or master of one's destiny?
So maybe you really do begin feeling a little more Kit-ish as your plane swings around and you see the city below, and the lights are the universe and it's a place maybe you could be a Kit in.
And you climb in a cab and say, "Times Square" and there you go past landmark after landmark and oh my gosh, you're on CENTRAL PARK WEST, it's a real place and not just a set on Sex In the City. (And also, OH MY GOSH, the cab almost hit that lady crossing the street.)
And just seeing that sign by the park makes you feel thinner and younger and better-dressed and thinking that a friend named "Kit" might have fit in with the Sex In the City girls.
And then we're driving down Broadway and it's all bright lights, big city, and even though the frigid weather has traveled, too, from Fort Wayne to NYC, the streets are full of people going somewhere and everywhere, and here you are with them -- me, "Kit" -- and wherever the city's energy comes from, suddenly, you've got it too. And even though you've been traveling all. day. long. you want to change clothes and go somewhere fun and have a drink and be witty and laugh and feel very ... not Cathy-ish. Carrie-ish.
When you are in NYC, it's easy to forget you're a Hoosier/Buckeye kind of girl, and pretend for a day or three that you're at home in Manhattan. And as you're walking down Broadway, you are at home, because in your black coat and slacks and with a scarf around your face, you blend in with every other frigid pedestrian.
And for three days, as you go to conference seminars and run around the hotel and go out for dinner in very cool places and look out at Times Square from your hotel room, it's easy to be Kit. It's easy to be anyone you want to be, somehow.
Back on the plane, flying home from LaGuardia, do you feel Kit slipping away from you, and Cathy sneaking in again?

Nah--we're all me. I'm pretty well integrated, and comfortable in my skin. Call me what you will, I'll always be (mostly) Cathy. And really, those Sex In the City girls live about as alien a lifestyle from me as if they were from another planet. It's fun to play, though--kind of like playing dress-up when you're little.
How about you? What's your new label?

About, what day may come

a slight, silver sky--thin snow--chill
Thursday: February: 2008
what comes this day?
if written on my calendar
dates made to be broken
no guarantee I'll be there
opportunities do come
telephones ring
text me, or email
plans change
sometimes on purpose
some, not
every night, same:
face, teeth, read, light
every. night.
morning: light, face, teeth...radio
every. morning.
brain reviews calendar
and packs lunch, and
out the door...
then comes this day
chill, thin snow, silver sky
what day may come?

What comes this day for you?

Fiinal results on "how are you keeping warm" poll

Snuggling: 3
Space heater: 1
Warming beverages: 3

About 'the salad days, the halcyon years'

From "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen (Algonquin Books, 2006):

Those were the salad days, the halcyon years! The sleepless nights, the wailing babies; the days the interior of the house looked like it had been hit by a hurricane; the times I had five kids, a chimpanzee, and a wife in bed with fever. Even when the fourth glass of milk got spilled in a single night, or the shrill screeching threatened to split my skull, or when I was bailing out some son or other -- or, in one memorable instance, Bobo -- from a minor predicament at the police station, they were good years, grand years.

Isn't that what we wish every year could be? "Good years, grand years." Do we know these "salad days" while they are happening? Or is it only from the vantage of time -- as the narrator is an old man, looking back -- that we realize how "halcyon" our days have been?

Today--how was it for you? Did you drag your butt out of bed, slug your coffee, and settle your butt into your office chair (or where-ever), calculating how many hours until lunch, then until home? Was the highlight of your day when the email came around that said "come get donuts"? Did you have to go to your inner happy place (for hours) as you plugged away at your computer? Did you just need to crash when you finally got home, exhausted by...not much of anything?

Maybe you're not getting enough salad.

"Water for Elephants" is about the circus, about a young man who leaves veterinary school to, literally, run off with the big top, and his months with the menagerie and the performers and the workmen change the course of his life. I'm thinking maybe it's easier to have a grand life when your past includes an elephant named Rosy and a chimpanzee named Bobo.

I'm feeling a little gray--it's been foggy for two days, and raining some of it, and I really miss the sun. Lent starts tomorrow, and when you work in a Catholic environment, you know that means six weeks of everyone "giving up" something--they really take that "fasting and abstinence" seriously. And, the groundhog saw its shadow last Saturday. Remember how long I thought January was, and that it might be a good thing?

Well I was wrong.

I did really enjoy "Water for Elephants" -- it's really fun to discover a new writer you like. And you know what? I get to go to New York City again next week! Oh, and March 1--it's only 24 days away! Meteorological spring!

Yea I'll talk myself out of it.

How about you? How halcyon are your days?

About what I saw at the Y

In the locker room I see cute little high school girls with slim waists and fake-bake tans and cell phones stuck to their ears and long, straight hair, wearing Daisy Dukes that say "cheerleader" on the butts, and tight camis. And I kill a swift longing for my own long-gone sixteen-year-old self, and try to recognize the face that looks back at me in the mirror by the door.
And today everybody on the track is going left from the door and I step off lively to blend in with the power walkers and the runners from the college, who are doing power laps.
Ahead of me is a lady who usually walks with a friend, and I see them all the time, talking earnestly and continually, and always passing me, and I stare at them, because they rarely laugh or even smile, and I wonder, what the HECK do you talk about everyday that is so dang serious? Today this lady is by herself, very strange, and even odder, when I pass her, she smiles. I like her haircut, but don't know her to tell her so. And I walk on.
From the track you can see the foyer, the machines, the gyms, the spinning room, the gymnastics room, all on the inside; and out the windows, the park, the pond, the parking lots. Today I'm not seeing much outside--too foggy. Last week, I watched two kids walk on the icy pond, wondering if the ice were thick enough to hold them (it was).
But there's plenty to see inside.
Mostly today I am noticing all the conversations. In the foyer there's nearly always a group or two of people chatting way, sometimes, for the whole half-hour I walk. Sometimes it's two or three women--maybe they're waiting for kids to be done in dance class, or tae-kwon-do?--and sometimes it's a man and a woman, like one day last week. They talked and talked, laughing, looking serious, focused. How did they know each other? What were they talking about? I wished I had a pair of the Weasleys' Extendable Ears.
Today I watched a lady talking to a guy on a stepper machine (they were really into their conversation, too, and it went on for over half an hour) and I wondered, how the heck does he have the breath to work that stepper and talk at the same time, for so long?
And I watched the coach of the college kids encouraging them, calling out times as they passed, and then talking to each runner as they completed their laps and peeled off into the open area.
I watched two people sitting on the bench by the stairs not talking to each other, as an older lady and a middle-aged man waited for someone to get done with ... something.
The two young women with heavy hips who'd walk, then jog, then walk, then jog, talking all the time. Would they be short-termers, New Years' resolution-type people, working out at top speed for a month, then dropping out as busy-ness overcomes them? Or would I be seeing them into the spring, getting smaller and smaller? (And running faster and faster?) Stay tuned.
And here are those high-school girls from the locker room, me passing them, as they amble around the track, more focused on their social life than their walking speed.
And towards the end of my many laps, the crowd starts to gather in the spinning room, or, as I think of it in my head: the torture chamber. Because when those people get spinning, they all look like they are about to die, cheered on by the unbelievably perky, well-turned-out instructor and accompanied by a wide sampling of energetic '80s music. Today I spot someone I know adjusting her bike before the class, but I refrain from rapping on the window to get her attention. She might be in her last few moments, and I don't want to scare her. I'm glad my walk gets done before the spinning starts--that class wears me out, even though I'm just passing by.
A half-hour of observation and I'm done--back in the locker room it's mostly moms and little kids, stripping down to swim, the room full of instructions like "Take your shoes off" and "Put your clothes in here" and "You have to go potty! NOW!"
I'm ready to go--I've not had any conversations here, except the made-up ones in my head. Next time I'll remember new batteries for my radio, and maybe I won't be so interested in other peoples' lives.
Or, maybe I will.
How about you? What conversations have you overhead?

About, turn the page

I wrote previously of the way January lingers on my calendar, in a way no other month of the year does.
Today, though, I must turn the page, and comes now February, and then, and then.
Since I was a teenager, I've kept some kind of calendar or organizer, and on it I keep my appointments and obligations, and I'll jot notes of what I did or where we had lunch or whatever went on of a day.
If my high school Hallmark calendar booklet had things like "4pm, band practice" and "4th period, student council," my 21st-century version has things like "9am, mammogram" and "4pm, pick up grandkids at babysitter."
Who knew.
If my little notebook's month past looks like so many chicken scratches--every day filled with some reminder or outing or due date--and it's only through that month's scratchy notes that I can even remember how we filled our busy days--there is a certain satisfaction in turning a new leaf, and beginning again with a month of empty squares, waiting to be filled with the minutiae of my life.
And even before the month begins, the squares begin to fill with "dentist's appointment," and "Jayme's birthday" and "basketball game" and "vacation!"
And if there is potential in every empty day, there is also danger; while last Tuesday might have been "doctor's appointment," next Thursday might be "followup tests," and who knows what goes beyond that? With grace and luck, it's just "dinner out, Appleby's" and the pages turn again.
So today, I must say goodbye to January, loved and hated, the longest month of the year, but the coldest, whose beginning is the end of the holiday season, and whose end leaves us longing for spring, always a new beginning.
So I turn the page: so long, January. What will fill my squares in this new month?
How about you? How are your pages turning?