Mistakes

-going to kickboxing class last night. I can't move my arms hardly at all today.

-not buying French Milk (by Lucy Knisley) sooner. I have to ration myself. I want to read it constantly all day, and it's making me homesick for Paris, but I am saving it for before-bedtime-only. I am also getting to sleep later than I should be as a result, but c'est la vie.

-eating three cookies after making myself a healthful dinner of pasta with sugar snap peas and avocado-tomato salad. Foiled myself again!

-wearing my hair down today. Muggy.

-fuming over my missing New York Magazine yesterday when it didn't show up on my step, silently accusing my downstairs neighbors of thieving it. (It arrived today.)

-not going to see Neko Case last month. Ughh.

-staring too long at this baby I saw in Club Monaco on Sunday. She was maybe probably somewhere around 2 (fuzzy baby hair, dimpled elbows), and she was sitting in her stroller watching a movie on her mother's iPhone, holding the little phone just so and watching the screen with undivided focus. I was flabbergasted. I stared.

-buying French Milk (even though it was on sale). I need more books like I need a hole in the head.

-friending my fifth grade boyfriend in a fit of boredom over the weekend. This hasn't technically become mistake material yet, but the potential is certainly there.

Speaking of old time friends, tomorrow I'm meeting my childhood best friend for coffee. We've been BFF since we were 2 (fuzzy baby hair, dimpled elbows). We've been friends for over twenty years. Yow!

Have good nights, all.

About time

It feels like ages, doesn't it? Feels like I've been out of the country I've been away from here so long. Here's where I've been:

-work

-New Jersey

-upstate New York for a lovely potluck in the mountains

-having my first fiddle lesson

-work

-walking in Central Park

-lying to Kate about having been to a certain reading, but only for the sake of a birthday surprise!

-sipping a Honey Dove at the Dove Parlour (which makes me want to wear a feathered hat and carry a lace handkerchief)

-work

-listening to Neko Case's Middle Cyclone on a loop

-watching my fiddle teacher and her band, the Dolly Sods, play an awesome set at Pete's Candy Store under the marquee lights

-in Florida for my wee sister's college graduation, dodging lizards and eating oranges like it was my job (they were AMAZING; I brought one back for my foodie friend Allison and she wrote me an email from work: "It tastes like a flower!")

-seeing Jeffrey Eugenides interviewed at B&N for the re-release of The Virgin Suicides (what a delightful man; completely natural and kind and game for any question thrown at him; I'm jealous of the sods at Princeton who get to call him Professor)

- having my second fiddle lesson; I can now play "Twinkle, Twinkle," a few scales, and two very touch-and-go arpeggios

-reading Amy and Isabelle (highly, highly recommended, even if the only bits you read are her descriptions of the woods; plus, having read Olive Kitteridge for book club and then watched it win the Pulitzer last month, reading A&I  was like reading a first draft of OK, or peeking into Elizabeth Strout's notebook of story ideas--it seemed like all the seeds for Olive were there in that first book)

-doing some long, long overdue spring cleaning

And to top off that cleaning job, I'm now going to walk to Home Depot and buy some household items, including plants. See you soon, I promise.