I am stopping work now, even though I am in the middle of something, because there is absolutely no reason (except for my stupendously powerful need for completion) for me to finish this tonight. It is not due until tomorrow at 11am and it will only take me an hour to get it done. I need to let go.

Ross’s research project is going well! Yay! His face is sweet when he is excited.

I think we are both obsessed with food. But then I’m beginning to think that everyone is obsessed with food. I think it is a national phase we’re all going through together, like blogging and suddenly becoming interested in photography.

Anyway, I don’t mind. It’s not a bad thing to always have on your mind.

Man, I am pooped. (Incidentally, after I typed that I searched my archives to find out how many times I have told you I was pooped, and the answer is five since 2004. I also turned up one special entry that was not about me, but about how pooped Sophie used to get when she was learning to crawl.)

I wish I could say I was tired from a schedule packed full with thrilling events, but that’s only partially true. What I’ve mostly been doing is writing. I’ve been writing some front matter for a teacher’s handbook. I’ve been writing several passages, poems, and plays for the little kiddos whose educations I shape with my hot little hands (I was meant to be editing those, but sometimes manuscript comes in with…issues). I’ve been writing and rewriting an article for a magazine, which has now gone through two editorial reviews and two extensive revisions. The process has taught me a great deal about the job I want to have, and eliminated any last traces of ego I may have retained about my writing, which makes me extremely happy. I don’t mean that I’ve been horribly torn down; I mean that I’m more used than ever to taking edits and running with them, and to kissing what I may have thought were delicious phrasings goodbye when someone suggests a change to what I wrote. It’s also been helpful because it reminded me that science journalism takes many forms, and some forms prohibit editorializing. Since it’s editorializing that I love the most (I know, I bet you’d never have guessed), that knowledge is also going to shape the job I’m working on creating for myself.

It’s kind of a fun learning curve. I feel like I’m putting myself through a professional course of sorts—an extremely scattered and slow one with no student fees.

Anyway, tired me. No new photos in a while. I’m working on that too.

I kept looking at my set of museum photos and wanting to do something with them, so I did.

That’s all! I didn’t have coffee today until 4pm, and it made me supremely unproductive.

Although come to think of it, I haven’t been all that much more productive since 4pm.

Oh well.

I see that it has once again been five days since I posted here, and I wonder to myself if in some way I have disappeared in the meantime, melted into the ether. I wonder what happens to the image of me you hold in your mind when I do not write about myself: does it hold very still, like something frozen? Does it lose all its color and fade away, like photographs of a person who has gone back into the past and erased her grandparents’ meeting in a time-travel movie? Do you imagine that my days away from my blog are neat blank voids, clean as a crossword puzzle before you unfold the morning paper? Or do you invent for me amusing pastimes based on the personality you imagine me to have—do I go square dancing? Do I write letters? Do I play hopscotch and drink peppermint schnapps?

Here is one thing: I listened to someone read 126 words from page 57 of Lolita. Felt the pleasurable warmth of recognition. Called out, loudly but not loudly enough, “Lolita!” Failed to win a drink. Felt happy anyway.

There is a pot of chewy and delicious seitan in the fridge waiting to be used in some very exciting future recipe. Our bellies are full of leftover pork chop from last night’s attempt at making a Singaporean-comfort-food meal, which was a great success. Tomorrow night Morgan is having us over for dinner: he says it will include asparagus, steak, Gorgonzola, tapenade, and a lemony dessert. It’s a good weekend.

Oh, yeah! And we’re heading out to the opera.

I suppose taking and then carefully annotating a picture of your home office doesn’t give the impression that you’re using it very productively just at the moment, does it? Well, okay, it’s true. I’m waiting for some manuscript to come in on one project and for some guidelines to come in on another, so I don’t technically have to do anything right now. I could read some of my book. I could make myself a piece of toast with cottage cheese. I could go outside and dance around in what my weather widget claims is the 70-degree sunshine, which I am tempted to believe even though it is freezing in my apartment (Why are apartments always colder in spring than in winter? Sigh.).

But no. Instead I did some things for Utata and made this picture.

Click on the photograph for more notes and terribly exciting details about my workspace.