Extra-ordinary aspects of an ordinary April Saturday

1. It's snowing.

2. For breakfast, Alice (all 23 pounds of her) ate

• 6 am -- a bowl of Cheerios
• 6:30 am -- a bowl of oatmeal
• 7:15 am -- a peanut butter & jelly sandwich, crusts and all
• 8 am -- pancakes

3. Nevertheless, at 7:30 am I was reading Alice a book of her choosing, What to Do About Alice? (a picture book about Alice Lee Roosevelt), and when it mentioned the president's daughter growing up, our Alice began to whimper, "I don't want to grow up. I want to stay little!" 

Needs to change her diet, then.

4. I was at work from 8:30 to 5:30 preparing my syllabus for the next block, and I never saw another person in the building. Guess everyone else is either smart enough not to teach the last block of the year or expert (or tired) enough to wing it at the end?

5. Went out to my second live cultural event in two weeks! For Christmas I gave Tom tickets to see David Sedaris, who was in town tonight, and so we got to have a date. (Got caught in the driving snow walking from our car to the event center--who would have thought?) And earlier this month I heard Amy Tan speak on campus. Two completely different writers stylistically, but not unalike. Both spell-binding storytellers who know how to start with a seemingly casual tangent, then circle in tightly on a good story, drawing you with them, before spiraling back out to where they began. Both inspire me to want to write, too, even while making it clear I may lack what it takes, as they both draw their endless inspiration from terrible childhood experiences with psychologically abusive parents. How could my loving folks do such a thing to me, leaving me high and dry with no deep wounds to work out of my system?

Perhaps, whenever I feel like we're screwing up on the parenting front, I can take comfort in the fact that Edith and Alice might make the bestseller lists one day.