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2/23/1999 Night Sky3:14 p.m. I didn't finish that bottle of champagne last night after all. I had one glass after I wrote my journal entry and then noticed my face was getting hot. I have fair, Irish skin that blushes easily. I checked the mirror and, sure enough, my cheeks were bright red, the left one in particular. Since rosacea runs in the family and since alcohol can trigger the flareups, I decided to stop at that one glass of champagne, stars or no stars. It's a good thing I'm not a drinker, or I'd probably have a nose like W. C. Fields' by now. The twins didn't nap at all today. They spent almost two hours up in their room talking, laughing, and singing. I finally told them they could get out of bed but could not come downstairs to play until they picked up all the shredded tissues littering the floor of their room. Stephen just appeared on the steps to tell me that they are done. I told him to double check. I made bread this afternoon. Usually I spray the pan with vegetable oil, but today I decided to see how non-stick a non-stick pan actually is. Bad idea. I had to maul the bread to get it out of the pan. I used the blunt end of a knife to pry the loaf away from the sides of the pan; unfortunately, I ended up gouging out a hole in one side of the bread. Lesson learned. 3:29 p.m. Matthew reported that they've finished their cleaning. I went up to check, and wonder of wonders, they had picked up all the tissue. The wastebasket is half-full of shredded kleenex. Driving home last night we saw two bright objects very close together in the western sky. Tab checked the astronomy column in this Sunday's paper and found out that what we had seen were Venus and Jupiter, which were putting on a spectacular show for us. They are supposed to appear even closer together tonight. I hope we will be able to see them, though; the sky has been cloudy all day. I used to love looking at the night sky when I was a little girl. I remember lying out in our yard on summer nights, blades of grass tickling the backs of my legs, the sounds of the neighborhood fading away as the sky darkened. I'd look up at a sky bejeweled with stars like glittering diamonds strewn carelessly upon blue-black velvet. I'd locate the more familiar constellations and try to puzzle out the erratic courses of the planets. Sometimes I would choose a particularly beautiful star and watch it for awhile. I'd wonder if on a world circling that star there was perhaps a being looking back at me. I regret that my boys will not grow up knowing the night sky I knew. Air pollution and reflection from the ubiquitous sodium vapor lights have obscured all but the brightest stars here in New Jersey. The only time my sons will get to see more than a few stars in the sky is when we make our annual trips to Maine. The stars were as well known to me as the neighbors on our street; to my boys they will be as distant as their cousins in Maine, loved but only seen once or twice a year.
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