KP

Today was my first day back to work after a week away. I don't usually mind returning to work, and I didn't mind it today. I like my job and my colleagues (that's such a fancy word, isn't it? Like I'm a university professor or a corporate attorney), so it's not a hardship to be in the office. Only I couldn't concentrate. I didn't have any good ideas, so I just did detail work. I made plans and checklists. I would have organized my inbox, but I didn't think of it--that's how uninspired I was .

In project management, there's a concept called lessons learned. At stages throughout a project, and at the project's conclusion, and really any time that something occurs to you, you should document lessons learned--good or bad--so that the next project team will benefit from your acquired wisdom. It's a good practice. I could apply it to my recent trip, because as much thought and effort as I put into packing, I could have done far better.

Lesson Learned #1: Pack pajamas that you don't care about. You can ditch them to make room for the stuff you'll acquire along the way. I suppose that Lesson Learned #2 could (or should) be not to acquire stuff along the way. But that's crazy talk.

*****

It's Wednesday, and I just finished grappling with a daily struggle. I dislike cooking, so much so that I will do almost anything to avoid it; and so every day, I have to force myself to start dinner before I involve myself in 25 other projects that will only delay the inevitable, which is that dinner must be cooked, and I must cook it.

Every day, I tell myself that I'll start dinner THE MINUTE I walk in, instead of checking email and folding laundry and washing lunch dishes and starting a blog post and preparing tomorrow's coffee and perusing the mail. But something almost always distracts me, and then it's an hour later, and everyone's hungry, and dinner is nowhere near the table. It's not even on the stove.

Today wasn't much different, though dinner is cooking now as I write this, so that's a step in the right direction. I should try to learn to like cooking. I certainly like eating.

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Thursday night, and the Capitals are playing the Hurricanes for the second time in a week. And I cooked again tonight, a meal that I make pretty often. My family might be sick of it, but they ate it happily enough.

I've been waking up at 4:30 every morning, and I haven't been able to go back to sleep. I don't think it's jet lag-related, because I've been back for almost a week now, and this happens all the time. It's probably more to do with spring, season of PTSD and panic attacks, predictable and vivid as cherry blossoms. This too shall pass. I do need to sleep eventually.

*****
It's Friday now. Do you know what I did today, other than wake up at 4:30 AM? I painted my nails, a cranberry red color. This is worthy of mention because I never do this. I don't think I've ever painted my nails a bright color, ever in my whole life. And all of a sudden, I decided that I wanted to have red nails. I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's a little jarring--it looks like I'm bleeding out from my fingertips. Maybe I'll get used to it.

My older son is leaving tomorrow for his high school band trip to NYC. 60 students, 2 teachers, and eight heroic parent volunteers are going to descend on Manhattan, colonize a hotel, visit the Statue of Liberty and Rockefeller Center and the 9/11 Memorial, see a musical, sit for a master class, and perform at  Hofstra University. And if the itinerary is any indication, they're also going to eat like passengers on a Carnival Cruise ship.

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It's Saturday morning and I slept in all the way to 5:30. Progress. According to this morning's news, cherry blossoms are at "puffy white" bloom stage, with peak bloom expected on Monday. I care more about the forsythia, which are at peak right now. I love forsythia, so unassuming and cheerful and so fleeting. Three weeks, and the blooms are all gone, turning the forsythia into plain green shrubs until the next early spring.

I drove my son to school this morning, where he and his fellow band members gathered with their suitcases and duffel bags and backpacks and instruments, waiting to board their bus to New York City. Excited and happy, they rolled their suitcases and shouldered their backpacks and waved to their parents with a glance over the shoulder. It's 9:30 now so according to the itinerary, the buses left 30 minutes ago. I'll miss that boy, but he'll be back on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, it's a stuff-to-do weekend. I have shopping to do and an already pretty clean house to clean and swim team business to conduct and some work to finish. It's Lent, so I'll probably go to Confession. My nails, painted just yesterday, are a mess, because I forgot for a moment that I don't live the kind of life that allows a person to keep her hands nice, so I'll probably take the nail polish off. But it's also still the weekend. So I'm not going to cook.