Dear Reader:

So, you remember that I occasionally have these lovely days where everything and everyone is fascinating and delightful?   I call them my sparkly days?   Well, less frequently, but still occasionally I will have days in which I am seized with sadness and, somehow, seem to take on all of the suffering and ennui of the world.   Unfortunately, today was such a day.  The gray skies of the morning seemed to just inexplicably seep into my being.   I felt as though I was almost transformed into a nineteenth century heroine.   I needed to don my gray dress and start wandering the moors in true Jane Eyre fashion.   Luckily, I have kids and responsibilities and looming projects and, crucially, a sense of humor which I retain even in the darkest of days that keeps me from really succumbing to such feelings.    

But to demonstrate the reality of this kind of state of mind, let me give you a little vignette from story-time with the kids tonight.   We always read two books.   The first one was Babar, the Little Elephant - actually, one of my favorites.   Everything was going along fine (I even made it through the death of Babar's mother without too much ado) until the page where the old King of the Elephants dies after eating a bad mushroom.   The words, I think, are that he "became ill from eating a bad mushroom.   So ill, in fact, that he died.   This was a great calamity."   Well, normally, I just say to myself - poor guy - his time was up.   What a way to go.   But, today, I actually had quite an inner reflection going on the arbitrary nature of mortality and the rather careless way in which the author made short work of this "great calamity" moving on so quickly to Babar's triumphant return.   Why short-shrift that august old king?  Why didn't he know that that mushroom was bad?  Why? Why?

The second book was entitled "The Day that Everything came with Dinosaurs."   The conceit of this hilarious book is that a little boy goes with his mother to run some boring errands on a random Friday afternoon and every place they stop offers him a free pet dinosaur.    At the bakery, they buy a dozen donuts which come with a triceratops.   At the doctor's office, instead of a sticker after an exam, you get a stegosaurus.   You get the idea.   The boy is thrilled - the mother is losing her mind.   Well, they get home and the mother starts putting the dinosaurs to work at the house doing chores.   And, then she hosts a party for all the neighborhood kids and their dinosaurs and a lot of work is done at her house.    All I could think was - "Really, no concern about the carnivores?   It's just OK for these things to be walking down NYC streets and there's no damage to the buildings?  Who's in charge here?  What strange force is sending these dinosaurs here on this particular day?   Why is this mother so unconcerned for the safety of her son?"

OK, I'm making fun of myself a little bit, obviously, but seriously the air felt heavy and life felt heavy today.   However, I did take some pics of the changes in the sky in late afternoon.   I am really becoming a sky watcher these days:

So, the gray skies, as always, do go away eventually (another reason I do not still live in the upper Midwest!).   And, I had a lovely moment in the car on the way back from the grocery store where my I looked in the rearview mirror and actually caught my daughter quietly singing along with James Taylor's "Sweet Baby James."   I feel like that is an epic win.  

But, I will admit to getting a chocolate frosted creme filled donut today - because imagining an existence in which I NEVER EVER EVER eat for emotional reasons is an unrealistic expectation.  So, DANGER, DANGER.  But, I logged it into myfitnesspal.com and after I pried my grimacing eyes open to look at the calorie count, it turns out it wasn't quite as bad as I had imagined.  

Total calories consumed today:  1587
Total calories burned today:  265 (45 minutes on the treadmill)
And, because I am currently in an obsessively checking the scale mode, I can report that I was down another .2 lbs. since I weighed myself two days ago.  

Breakfast:

Lunch:

Dinner (you'll forgive me if I leave the donut undocumented, right?):

So, dear reader, I shall attempt to shake the weight of the world off of my shoulders tonight (I seriously don't want to add that to the scale numbers) and will strive to achieve lightheartedness tomorrow.    I hope I won't see any of you wandering the moors tomorrow as well.

Thanks for reading this really odd post.  :)