A few notepads and a Scrabble dictionary, and we're in business

I'm down to the last few pages of The Cazalet Chronicles, and I have to stop, because I'm not ready to let go of the Cazalet family. I've never taken this long to read a book, but it's actually five books in one, and over 2,200 pages, so that's how long it takes, I suppose.  Elizabeth Jane Howard seems to have understood people, and life, better than most writers. Female writers who write about family life and relationships--you know, humanity--tend to be dismissed as non-serious, and non-literary. Maybe that's why I had never heard of this great novelist until I started reading the Cazalet books. I'll miss them.

*****
Sunday: The sun came out! It's 8:45 AM and I just came in from a walk. I wore gloves, in May. But the sun is out. Yesterday's gloom was so heavy that I thought it would push me right under with it.  I even took a nap, which I almost never do. Everything seemed gray and ugly, and so I slept through it. Today, it's still too cold (again--gloves, in May). But drenched in sunshine, everything looks clean and cheerful again. I'm wide awake.

And the Capitals won last night. Like most other Washington Capitals fans, I'm a little cynical during the playoffs. And we're nowhere near out of the woods yet. But we avoided round 2 elimination, for now.

*****
Summer is fast approaching. Another summer of swim meets and weekly swim team emails and hanging around at the pool. Oh, and work, of course. I do have a job. Last summer was the first summer in nine years when I wasn't either working from home or working part-time. And surprisingly, it was still a lovely summer, full of swimming and barbecues and even a road trip. I returned to work full-time because I needed to, financially. But I've found that although I miss hanging around with my kids, I also really like working. I like being busy. I like being needed. I like that my job is interesting enough that I think about it when I'm not actually at my desk, and I get ideas, and I keep a notebook with running lists of things to do and things to write about.

*****

If the making and management of lists was a profession, then I'd sit alone atop its pinnacle. I'd probably have my own company. Or I'd be one of those NBC News special correspondents, called upon to comment when a big list-making story breaks.

List-making and spelling. These are two areas of endeavor in which I excel; sadly, however, demand for these rather rarefied skills is pretty scarce. There's not a spelling draft, because if there was, I'd have gone pretty near the top of the first round. There's not a list-making event in the Olympics, because if there was, I'd have been featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated, weighed down under pounds of gold.  Or maybe I'd have a media empire, built on my extraordinary spelling accomplishments. People would get sick of me. They'd sigh every time I showed up on TV. "There's that spelling bitch again," they'd sneer. But I wouldn't care. I'd cash the checks and let the haters hate. Eventually, the underpaid Harvard graduate who managed my social media would write an anonymous "Devil Wears Prada"-style tell-all, and the whole thing would come crashing down.

By all means, rely solely on spell-check.
You know how that thrills me. 

*****
That, right there, was adult ADD in action. I folded laundry, unloaded a dishwasher, and looked for my next book to read, right in the middle of that paragraph. Just a few more pages to go, so I can no longer delay my parting with the Cazalets.