Head in the game.

The question is which game? 

I have been

• playing with grandchildren.
• putting together a Star Wars Lego ship with C3PO and R2D2, as well as a couple of menacing stormtroopers.
• building a house for Buzz Lightyear.
• helping with packing, mainly by playing Zombie Grandma with the children in the backyard.

• eating the leftovers from a family (farewell) party.
• watching the weather in Phoenix/Tempe. (pro tip: it will be very hot.)
• watching endless episodes of The Killing.
• making gestures at other work--writing a very squishy outline for a chapter, for instance, or going to a meeting and nodding my head at the work I know I need to be doing, and will be doing, at least I think so.

I have a window open on my iPad to an article about Caedmon, who it turns out was in residence at Whitby Abbey before it was called Whitby Abbey. Caedmon, of Caedmon's hymn. (Dear reader, if it happened to have been you who clued me into the Caedmon/Whitby connection, I hope you will remind me that it was you.) I think I might write about this. I might make a digital story. I might write a draft of that chapter, with or without the outline, but definitely with my colleague.

All of this will wait, though, until I have driven to Phoenix in a UHaul with my sons, eaten road snacks and listened to road music, and helped to see them start in their new place.

[here, please insert the apt and fitting words I am not composing, even though I have tried, about all of this, about them going.]


This is the order of things, and this is where, pardon my preposition, my head is at.

Hightouchmegastore: The Quarterly Review.

My day's activities, rated on a five point scale.

Sex and the City, viewed in the afternoon with Dr. Write: ****1/2
My new haircut: *****
Lunch at Big City Soup: *****
Getting the stuff on my "To Do" list done (bills, library books, buying snacks for the road, list-making itself): *****
Returning library books on time, no fines: *****
Loading stuff onto iTunes: **** (one cd caused my cd-rom player to make a terrifying grinding noise)
Syncing my iPod (music collection now measurably more awesome): *****
Bruiser out for some exercise: *****
My packing plan (to be executed in the morning): *****
My outfit (polka dot sweater, yeah!): *****
Cute but also comfortable shoes: *****1/2

Comprehensive review of today: *****!

[Scale: * = abysmal
** = abysmal, and one
*** = level-ish
**** = darn good
***** = stellar]