Reading: Right Side, still, and Edwards's other book, Drawing on the Artist Within.

Watching: Old sitcoms on Nick at Night from midnight until 1:30 this morning while I was working late on Prakash. Then I turned to TNT to watch Jaws. I hadn't seen it in years. Watching it, I was struck by how unhurried and deliberately plotted the movie is. The menace is allowed to build and build until the final confrontation. I don't think an action movie as slowly paced as Jaws would succeed today in our ADD nation.

Tired

11:15 a.m. I was up late last night, as I expected. I finished with Prakash at 3 a.m., took a shower, and was in bed by 3:30. The alarm at 7:30 rang all too soon. My eyes feel gritty, my head is full of cotton, and I keep yawning. I am exhausted. All I want to do is sleep. This afternoon I'm supposed to meet Liz for lunch, but I'd really rather take a nap. I can't cancel though since Liz's schedule is always crowded, and I did manage to get Stephanie lined up to watch the boys today.

4:25 p.m. I woke up enough to enjoy my lunch with Liz. We met at Macaroni Grill, at her suggestion. It was packed; we had to wait for nearly 20 minutes to get a table. The hostess handed me a vibrating pager, a pretentious little touch, I thought, since nearly everyone waits in the same area. It's not as though there is anywhere else to go. It was my first time there, and I was pleasantly surprised. One of Tab's co-workers had told him that it wasn't a good place to bring kids, but Liz said she and her husband bring their two-year-old there often. The big bowl of crayons and the paper table cloth that you are allowed, in fact, encouraged, to draw on is a good indication that it is a kid-friendly restaurant. I'd like to go back with the boys sometime.

I did the four "pre-instruction" drawings in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain this afternoon. The assignment was to draw a face, a figure, my left hand, and a chair. It was a painful exercise, dredging up all my feelings of inadequacy. I hate not being able to do something well. My drawings are terribly crude and childish. That's not surprising, according to Edwards: most adults' drawing skills are arrested at the 10 to 12-year-old level. The reason is that we don't draw what our right brain tells is actually in front of us; instead, we draw what our left brain thinks should be there.

It's funny, I've seen this book floating around in book stores and libraries for years. Before now, I've never been tempted even to pick it up. In fact, I've even been fairly contemptuous of it. I'd always prided myself on being a verbal, linear-thinking, left-brain type. But I'm starting to realize that I'm missing out on a whole other way of seeing the world.

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