Friday Favorites

1. Favorite time of day. Morning, obviously. Always. But this time of year I like it especially: I get up when it's still dark and write, and then either go for a run or drive to work as the sun is rising, so I'm glutted with sunrises these days. I love it. It's so much better than my habits from the past few years, where I was running in the dark half the year and in the shower, I think, for the sunrise.

2. Favorite read of the week: I'm working my way slowly through The Hemingses of Monticello, which is about the family of slaves who were both Thomas Jefferson's unacknowledged inlaws and his companion and children. This is pretty much the perfect book for me right now: I spent the first half of the year immersing myself in the life and world of Thomas Jefferson, and dreaming of how to create my own private Monticello (which I'm still ambivalent about. I think people who create utopias tend to use the people in their lives as building blocks, and men who create utopias are especially dangerous this way). Now I'm reading about the invisible secret of Monticello, made visible. Much of the book is obviously speculative, but it's such smart and carefully researched speculation that it hardly matters.

3. Favorite meal of the week: chicken soup (made with leftover roast chicken) with basil pesto and rolls made with leftover mashed sweet yams. We've also had a lot of dessert: both Helen and Silas dedicated themselves to dessert projects this week. Si made a recipe he'd found on the internet, cupcakes with tombstones on them (well, two of the cupcakes had tombstones. Then he decided that was way too much work and the rest just have frosting.), and Helen made a recipe she'd found in a craft book, sugar cookies with food color paintings on them. She also made a T shirt with a pink zebra painted on it in fabric paints. They're both so crafty, those kids, although Si is still a follow-the-instructions-to-the-letter kind of guy, while Helen feels free to improvise.

Other than that it's been kind of a hard week, for no especial reason, except that I've had five bad hair days in a row and the kidnapping in Arvada has been bringing me down and I'm in kind of a personality head butting with someone at work (who is not in my department, so it's not really a crisis or a constant problem, just a disappointment to realize, again, that I am not liked by all people all of the time even though I SHOULD BE BECAUSE I AM A TENDER PRECIOUS SNOWFLAKE AND ALSO BRILLIANT.)

Anyway. The yard is adrift is golden glowing yellow, so there's that.