I got Grace’s report card today. I am reminded of why we are paying tuition for a 5 year old to go to school and play. Wow! They really seem to know my child. Of note is the eerie symmetry in her weakest link being music, where there are real questions about her “ability to sing with a sense of pitch.” Umm, yeah, we know where she gets that.

Highlight of this week. Meeting baby William Block on Tuesday afternoon. He was just divine and slept in my arms the whole time. Kara and Jason are fabulous. I’m nostalgic for that incredibly exhausting, overwhelming, emotional time – I don’t know that I’d do it again but I can now recognize what a transformative experience it is. And one that gets better the further away you get from it. I remember feeling like I had sand in my eyes and weights in my chest all the time – not just the dairy farm (as Kara calls it) but also a deep sense of something that I only identified as loss once I got months away from it.

In other news, I am such a homebody. Went to a beautiful CES cocktail party tonight. There was lovely company, and I particularly enjoyed talking to my friend Kristin Hall, though a few of my very favorite CES parents were not there. Still, at 7:50 or so I went to the bathroom, emerged, and all of a sudden just bolted. Without saying goodbye. Such a sense of glee at being home at 8:24 and in my pajamas and about to hop into bed with a great new book.


Mood-capturing photograph of Whit by Gracie, Tuesday evening.

Continuing with the Obama love-fest I began after reading Caroline Kennedy’s endorsement, this letter from Toni Morrison really moved me. I confess I was one of those who associate wisdom with a certain age, but her assertion that it’s a quality inherited and innate rather than learned is interesting. I’m not totally sure I agree, but it’s thought-provoking.

Charles Hotel courtyard lights, last Friday evening about 6pm.

I love this blog post from a man named Eric Zorn. He lists 50 things he’s learned in 50 years of life. A very valuable exercise for each of us, I think. A few of my favorites of his:

10. Empathy is the greatest virtue. From it, all virtues flow. Without it, all virtues are an act.
17. Don’t waste your breath proclaiming what’s really important to you. How you spend your time says it all.
37. Mental illness is as real as diabetes, arthritis or any other disease, and no more disgraceful. It’s the stigma that’s disgraceful.
41. Almost no one stretches, flosses or gives compliments often enough.
49. Whatever your passion, pursue it as though your days were numbered. Because they are.

I was daunted when I started to write a list of my own. A project for day with more energy, mental and physical. When I think about what I’ve learned in my ordinary 33 years on earth I think about things both practical and abstract (and Eric’s list has a nice combination of both). In terms of the more big-picture, amorphous truths, many of them have changed and shifted over time. Embracing ambiguity and to learn to go with the flow continue to be big priorities for me; struggles, too, but dimensions on which I think I’ve made some faint progress. Maybe for now, when I write 33 things I have learned, I’ll focus on irrefutable facts. 1. Nutella is its own food group, and a critical one. 2. Bacon is a vegetable. 3. There is no music better than that of the singer-songwriters of the 70s. 4. Evening heels should all be stilettos, never chunky. 5. Jalapenos are delicious on pizza. 6. White wine is best on the rocks. ETC, ETC.