After three nights in a row featuring outstanding nightmares (night 1: Hitler! night 2: zombies! night 3: covered in insects and they’re even crawling out of my nose and mouth!), I’m grateful for these things:

• an absolutely gorgeous morning, weather-wise. no humidity or excessive heat, just 74 lovely degrees and blue and sunny skies

• a Chinatown run, which means (1) lots of fresh cherries, (2) a bunch of seafood, and (3) very interesting vegetables.

• my favorite music on the iTunes playlist: annie lennox, john prine, REM, feist, amos lee, elton john, diana krall, and bluegrass

• homemade blueberry coffeecake for breakfast, with a big mug of really great coffee

• the pleasure of having done work that was FUN and also well received

• a long day, stretching out in front of me with open arms and nothing planned

Hope it’s the same for all of you. I’m off to actually do something. First, though, I’ve gotta do the twist – “you never can tell” by chuck berry is on!

edit, after dancing: when my kids were little, and i was going to school full-time and working and raising them by myself, i had 4 chore lists – 3 kid-friendly and one for me. each week, the kids’ lists rotated. we’d do a cleaning blitz…we’d each take our list of chores, do them in a pre-arranged amount of time then we’d all meet in the living room when the timer went off. i’d put American Pie on, and we’d dance dance dance until we fell on the ground in a sweaty out-of-breath pile. we’d do the fun and easy dances – the twist, the monkey, the pony, the swim – it didn’t matter. it was just so much fun, and one of my favorite memories. dancing in the living room is the BEST.

.