Today was spectacular. Truly, the skies were absolutely dazzling, turning hourly like page after magnificent page of the most incredible illuminated manuscript on which you could ever lay eyes. As Percy and I rounded the turn off of Fordham, back onto Mass Ave, I looked heavenward and was wowed. It was as if M.C. Escher had gotten hold of an airbrush cannon and gone wild.

Meanwhile, a friend I met through one of my canning classes emailed me a post from her neighborhood listserv: someone had a persimmon tree, pregnant with fruit, in her front yard, and anyone was welcome to come pick. By the time I arrived, the lower boughs were bare, but there were some good knobs and forks offering themselves as a crude ladder. Clad in a silk shirt, cardigan and my trusty Toms, I scurried up that tree like a squirrel.

At the apex, my head was in between two electrical wires, but all was well, and I remembered what youthful fun it is to climb a tree. Getting down is another thing. I plucked six persimmons -the squirrels had already massacred so many!- with the intention of giving most away to my persimmon-loving pal, C. I'll try my annual "can I ever love persimmons" test when the remaining ones are fully ripe. They are a pretty fruit.

Then to school to pick up my munchkins (both of whom threw insanely outlandish tantrums today over NOTHING; is this still the aftermath of stupid Daylight Savings? I could kill it.) and then on and through an after-school afternoon. We witnessed a glorious sunset that seemed to grow more incredible by the moment until suddenly, night raced in and with it a perfect crescent moon. Ol said, "you know what would happen if that moon was a full moon? LUPIN!" Harry Potter reference, y'all. Oh lawd.

I finally got those bozos to bed after a complete #momfail when I suggested a competition: "who can get into bed, head on pillow, first?" BOTH, count them BOTH, kids managed to injure themselves in the simple and, wait for it, done-every-night act of getting into bed. Both were wailing about their pain, and honestly y'all, I just said, "goodnight."

Realizing that the flu shot to which I'd acquiesced earlier today was sinking its flu'y tentacles into me (damn you, flu shot!), I took two Advil and poured a little glass o' red. I roasted some broccoli and also an eggplant, two of my favorite recipes running through my mind screaming MAKE US. So I did. Broccoli with pimentón oil, and burnt eggplant with pomegranate. Aah. Both hit the spot in every way!