Weather: Changeable. On Sunday we were going outside in shirtsleeves, and yesterday we were back to winter coats. It is slightly warmer today than yesterday, high 50s or so, but grey and overcast.

Blossoms: The forsythia along Route 1 is in full and vivid bloom. Unlike the forsythia in front of people's homes, the shrubs on Route 1 aren't trimmed, so each forsythia bush has lots of spiky, upthrusting branches of golden flowers, like tongues of fire. Magnolias, cherry trees, and flowering pears are blooming everywhere!

Reading: "The Dead Lady of Clown Town," probably my favorite Cordwainer Smith story.

Watching: "Sports Night" on ABC, to which I became addicted a couple months ago. Why did it take me so long to find this show? Oh, yeah, because it had the word, "Sports" in its title. I love the rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue; it's almost Mametesque, if there is such a word. It's unusual to find a comedy of this caliber on network TV.

Statement of Purpose

Poor Tab didn't get much sleep last night, thanks to one of Lorraine's Hounds of Hell next door. The beagle, one of the animals she is trying to place, barked all night long, keeping Tab awake for hours. I'm one of those fortunate persons who can sleep through just about anything. I've been known to fall asleep with both bedroom lights on and the radio playing. The only thing that wakes me is the sound of one of the boys coughing or crying. Curiously, Tab can sleep through those noises. Tab thinks the reason he is such a light sleeper is that he was an only child and his mother kept the house absolutely quiet while he napped. He never had to sleep through noise, so he never learned how to do so. Luckily, our sons seem to have inherited my ability to sleep well. They almost never wake up at night unless they are sick.

Tab commented today that this journal, which I started for the boys, has had more about me in it than them lately.

I answered that my reason for keeping this journal is so that one day our sons will know who I was and what our lives were like when they were young. By the time they are grown, twenty or more years of raising three boys will have changed me. The woman I am now will be gone, and an older and, I hope, wiser person will have taken her place. So while I include the cute things the little guys say and do, I also write about what matters to me now, everything from the ups and downs of our marriage to what I'm currently reading.

Some of my family in Maine read this journal, too; the computer-deprived read the hard copy that I mail to them and the wired ones read it on the web. I publish it on this site because it motivates me to keep it up regularly, and because I'd like to think that a few others might see something of value in it.

Right now I'm looking at a very cool drawing Daniel did. He used magic markers in bold colors to create what he calls a map. In the lower left corner is our house, labeled "NUJ," which stands for New Jersey. A road, represented by two parallel black lines with a dotted yellow line between them, extends diagonally upward from our house to Nana's house in "MANE" (Maine) almost in the top right corner. Green triangles for pine trees line the bottom margin, and a yellow sun shines in a blue sky at the top of the page. Our blue minivan is on the road almost exactly midway between NUJ and MANE. As soon as I receive the adapter cord I ordered for the scanner Lorraine gave me and get the scanner up and running, I will scan this picture in because my words can't do Daniel's map justice.

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