My life is feeling jumbled recently. I moved back into a cubical after a brief stint sharing an office with two fabulous windows and natural light. Our little house on Henry St. had adopted a fuzzy mouse guest that likes to nibble through plastic lids, butternut squash, sacks of flour and sweet potatoes. The weather swings wildly back and forth between frigid wintery chill and balmy spring day. I’ve begun online dating. I’m flying to Washington DC in a week.
2014 is already proving to be a wonderful and terrifying year. So here is a short list of sweet things in my life:
1. Birthday Cards- I sent off a couple birthday cards in the mail this week. I’m bad, very bad, at remembering friends’ birthdays. It’s not for lack of love but more the sporadic nature with which I check my calendar and organize my numerical thoughts. The sending of birthday cards–stamping well wishes and trusting the US Post–feels warm and fuzzy knowing someone far away will physically touch the same envelope and reach the same words that you wrote days earlier. To all my friends whose birthdays I have forgotten, do not despair. There’s always next year. 
2. Brownies- Not just any brownies but Slutty Brownies. I made these beauties for a co-worker’s birthday and they are most intense, dense and luxurious brownies I’ve ever made. It takes all the decision-making (Cookie? Oreo? Brownie?) difficulties out of your dessert treat. Not for the dieter or faint of heart.
3. Sue and Donna-On Mondays and Wednesdays I wake up at 6:10am, stumble out of bed and navigate my way to the gym as my eyelids slowly unglue themselves from sleep. Sue teaches step/rep exercise classes on these mornings and I love her for all her high energy music and dedication to step aerobics. Donna, a spright 50 year old Asian woman, has more energy than a classroom of kindergardeners and personally recruited me for these deathly early morning workouts. But they are quickly becoming part of my personal routine and considering how much butter is in a slutty brownie, it’s probably for the best.
4. Movies- I don’t see movies much, if at all. And yet by tomorrow morning, I will have seen three within a week’s span. And good films at that. The bare and hauntingly beautiful music in Inside Llewyn Davis and the questions of meaning and longevity in Nebraska have stayed with me long after the lights of the movie house faded back into reality. Food for thought. I can only hope Dallas Buyers Club dusts me with an equally powerful residue that I’ll carry out into my daily comings and goings.
5. Untraveled Places– For obvious reasons. Because they’re waiting for you.
Twelve-toed Traveler 