Ha-ha, Tuesday, I beat you this week!

Tuesday, Tuesday, after last week's trampling, you may have thought you had today in the bag. School was cancelled, Tom left for NY. The odds were good that it might be a tough slog. But, you lose. Although the boys woke up before 6 am (horrid) and the snow started melting about an hour after things looked positively picturesque, this gal (and her little crew) had a lovely day. When we all finally slugged out of bed, I made some insanely good bluberry-Meyer lemon muffins on which we all gorged. Then the snowman ("Jack, why the dowel?" "Uh, to hold the balls together, Mom." Such an engineer this young one!), Home Alone, etc. And, I must give credit where credit is due and thank the heavens for an afternoon babysitter. Conversations about butts, sibling bickering, a bloody lip and also a bloody nose did have me fairly beat by 2 pm. And then, cue heavenly music and rays of light, the sitter arrived. While she was here, I mostly ran errands and worked on a piece, but even going to the dry cleaners and standing in a long line at a department store were fun. It is clear that sometimes I simply need to be by myself. While queuing, I considered -for possibly the 185th time in my life- that I wish my last name started with 'van' or 'van der'. Seriously, that is the surname equivalent of Ministry versus Cabinet or Office of. Cool versus less so. I'm not sure T would cotton to the idea of adding adjusting our name in this way; he's so literal when it comes to heritage and such. Just because we have no Dutch ancestry AT ALL shouldn't mean we can't adopt a bit of a name. In my opinion.

How is it 8:16 pm already? Surely, you're thinking, I can't mean that bedtime is near. But that's precisely what I mean, and so the mint chocolate cookie recipe that is staring at me with hangdog eyes -please make me, pleeeaase- will have to wait yet another day. I'm almost done with a book -who can believe it?!- and need the sleep. #gettingold #notsleepingpast6inasmanyyearswilldothat

For dinner I made some pumpkin ravioli in a sage-brown butter sauce and also enjoyed a cup of yesterday's potage. Even better today. Dinner = delicious.

On a serious note, have you read the first two installments (yesterday and today) of the Invisible Child series headlining the New York Times this week? It is a terrific, moving, heartbreaking call to action. The featured child is an 11-year-old named Dasani who, for the past two years, has lived with her seven siblings and parents in a mouse-infested, rotting, 520-square-foot room in a shelter in Brooklyn. Wow, wow. Please make time to read the pieces if you can.