I spent much of the day filing quarterly taxes (of course I waited until the very last minute), sending out W-2s and getting myself organized on the financial front. It didn’t help that I remembered last year at this time Telfer and I were in Palm Springs, reading by the pool and brunching at Norma’s. The financial work took longer than I thought it would – ran out of stamps, forgot another form was due but I got it all done with a bit of time to spare. I had a glass of rosé and four oysters at my very favorite restaurant before I was due home to relieve the babysitter. It made all the difference.
Telfer is on call tonight. The girls and I are almost done reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Cate got braces on her bottom teeth today and everything hurts. A shower night. I love that I can send my girls up the stairs to take a shower and put on jammies before we read. It feels like an impossible milestone has been achieved. This week is so much more relaxed than last – the bookstore had four events in five days which is just too many. Still learning this same lesson over and over.
A highlight this week: went to two live shows. Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keene on Saturday night with Telfer and dear friends and then Roseanne Cash on Monday night by myself. Olympia is small but not small. I love when music and storytelling collide and this week has been particularly rich.
My reading week has been above normal. Sherry gave me a book in the New Year that I ended up listening to: Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship by Gregory Boyle. It’s just what I needed to read on so many levels. It’s such a tender book, especially in this current political climate. If I could embody any one spirit, this would be it. I almost started listening to it again immediately but decided to wait just a bit (to let it sink in). Cate asked me to read her copy of A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel that I gave her for Christmas. Of course I did so immediately: when your 3rd grader asks you to read anything, you comply. I also read Winter by Ali Smith. Autumn was my favorite book of 2017 but Winter feels a little cold (pun intended, thank you James Wood for the New Yorker).
Andrea Y. Griffith 