Edith Wharton wrote something cheerful?

This quotation was the thought-for-the-day on my planner yesterday, “They seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods.” Lovely! It’s from Ethan Frome, perhaps the most singularly depressing novel I have ever read.

Which brings to mind a couple of other quotes. Mom was fond of quoting Thumper’s mother to me. And I have been known to repeat it to my girls, but probably not as often as I should, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say [anything] at all.” And something my Dad said, “There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it hardly becomes any of us to talk about the rest of us”). See this related link; [Dad quoted the variant.]

So, Ms. Edith, I take at least some of it back.

Things I realized yesterday morning [with a wind chill of 15ºF] that I will need if I start riding the train:
1. A real coat
2. A raincoat
3. Multiple small folding umbrellas
4. Wellies, preferably in the most obnoxious color I can find.
5. Sneakers, for other days

Note: BH&G online has two interactive programs [membership is free]:
1. Plan a Garden
2. Arrange a Room; I played in this one for a good chunk of the evening, last night.

Work was a little screwy and weird yesterday. I tumped a cup of apple juice [chilled to perfection, no less] over fax confirmations that were neatly lined up on my desk. Unfortunately, *before* I had scanned them. At which point I was ready to shut down the switchboard and lock up my desk and head to the Natatorium for a wee bit of stress relief. Also unfortunately, it was an hour and a half until quitting time.

It was so nice to go to the pool after work and let all remaining frazzledness splash away in the water. Some of the moves are getting easier. And the wristband on my watch was infinitesimally looser when I woke up yesterday morning.

Today is payday, always a good thing. And I will pick up that second gi-normous towel that I need, and maybe a terrycloth robe for when I first climb out of the pool. I’ll check the catalogue where I found my wonderful faux-fur-trimmed robe that I bought last winter, and I’ll also look locally, when I get the towel. The robe is nowhere near as important as another towel.

There will be no swimming on Monday, as the pool will be closed for MLK Day. But I think I will go tomorrow at 9:00am, before I get my nails done. I’m going to have to get them done every two weeks, religiously, instead of the 3 or 4 or 5 I do now. They grow slowly, unlike my hair, but I damaged the moons on both thumbs when I was a girl, smooshing them in the business end of old-fashioned wooden screen doors. [No, not on the same day.]

And so each thumbnail has a slight longitudinal furrow, which is no problem until it’s time for a fill, at which point the natural nail sometimes wants to curl away from the acrylic overlay. Nail Dude dremels away my natural nail on the underside of the tips, every time he does my nails, but sometimes time and/or money gets away from me. I should have gotten this done last weekend, but I was too busy having fun measuring rooms at the rental unit, having lunch with my friend, and sorting out how to get from one neighborhood that I know, to another.

OK, we’re officially off the topic of nail maintenance and on to something slightly less boring: pedometers. I have a freebie through Corporate by way of one of the insurance agents in Dallas who is a hunting buddy of the former managing attorney. [Are you paying attention? There will be a test.] Please don’t tell my agent I was cheating on him!

And yesterday I walked something like 539 steps while at work. This is approximate, because every time the pedometer rocks, it ticks off one step. I would hate to think what a good case of the hiccups would do for the day’s tally! I’m not sure whether to be pleased that I got in so many steps while being tethered to my desk, or sad because there are so few opportunities to move around during the day.

Still, I am doing *something*. And there is another dance tomorrow night; I will probably go, if only for the exercise. Because we all know that most of the guys who are even remotely interested in dating, are chasing what another friend calls “the fertile ones”. [Thumper’s mom, Lynn, think about Thumper’s mom.]

Time to report on my knitting. There was some, but again, not enough progress to be worth photographing. The ribbing is now 3.25 inches long. It’s ribbing. And I have entered one of those Black Holes of Knitting, where you knit and knit and knit, and at the end of the day you have maybe half an inch more than when you started.

But at least it’s not an exquisitely fashioned leaf in laceweight silk yarn. Oye!