10 Things that made me think this weekend

1. Being at a dinner party where every single other person at the table was either currently in or had been in graduate school. I was feeling intimidated until one said, “Yeah, but you’re a novelist.”

2. Reading gossip magazines and wondering if I should talk about how much I love Sailor Boy on my blog. Like, maybe one day we’ll break up and then I’ll be quoted forever talking about how wonderful it is that we can be in a situation and both think the exact same thing that we file away for later to joke with one another about and everyone will think, “No one saw this one coming, right?” “What did he ever SEE in her?” and “Can we call them Sailana?”

3. A mom with kids at the next table over who forced her children to order off the kids menu at a diner where there were many healthier options that the kids seemed to prefer to fried frozen chicken fingers. I was quite mystified, because the “kids portions” were as big as mine, and the price wasn’t smaller either. She seemed to decide this arbitrarily based on the theroy that kids should be eating off the kids menu. I decided then and there that when I have a family, our house would have a “breakfast anytime” option. (Especially in the age of enlightenment.)

4. The fact that the bookshelves we bought at IKEA might be the first things we’ve purchased that don’t fit in the back of Nikita. We had to tie her trunk down to get home. That was scary.

5. That my long-standing fantasy of putting together bookshelves with my partner in a lamplit room as a symbol of being grown up and independent and in love might be more fun as fantasy than as reality. Especially when we disagree on where to place the nails.

6. The West Wing. Always and again.

7. Trying out not one, but two new recipes and loving them both. They are stovetop (read, one pan) beef stroganoff and alfredo chicken pot pie.

8. Being in a clothing store and wondering how it is that fashion has so quickly outpaced what I feel are acceptable body coverings. I’m too young to be unfashionable, aren’t I? I’m a skinny girl, and I like to dress with a liberal-to-moderate degree of modesty, but everything in the store made me look a) pregnant and b) like a streetwalker. When Sailor Boy asks you, at the dressing room, if the shirt you’ve tried on is made to be worn outside of bed, you know fashion has gone overboard.

9. Getting asked to borrow the car for the first time. Saying yes immediately, then thinking about it, then wondering how anyone who has ever lent me a car has been wiling to do so, then realizing that I am karmically obliged to lend mine. Curses.

10. My upcoming revision letter.

Regarding the last, it’s coming Tuesday. Pretty excited/nervous. For the next few days, I have a lecture series planned for the blog. (Yay! Boo! Hiss! Shhh…. sorry, inside joke.) This will give me time to do some digesting before I come out here and spill all the gory details… like, how many pages it is. 😉