Geez.

my copy looks like this — very old, I got it in the late 1970s

Did you ever read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers? I read it in high school, carried my battered old copy with me everywhere and kept up with it even though I was homeless. When I got married in 1979, my husband and I went on a 6-month road trip and I read it out loud to him as we drove across New Mexico and Arizona. I watched the movie, with Alan Arkin as Singer and Sondra Locke as Mick. It’s all a bit sentimental, but it affected me strongly. In case you don’t know the story, it’s about a young girl (Mick) who lives with her family in a large house filled with boarders. Singer, who is completely deaf, moves in. Singer has his own worries and losses; his best friend Spiros goes kind of crazy and has to be put away, so Singer is quite alone and dealing with that loss. Mick is just at the yearning age of girlhood, where she feels things with great urgency. There’s a scene where she’s crouching underneath a neighbor’s window listening to the music on their radio — classical music, I can’t remember now if the piece is named — and it fills her with a feeling so powerful she wants to claw out her thigh muscles, from the impotence of understanding and expressing the emotion. I know that feeling.

Well, the deal is that everyone in town, including Mick, gravitates to Singer and tells him their problems. They talk and talk and talk, each feeling like he really gets them — finally, someone gets them, and he’s so interested! Whether they’re aware he’s deaf, I don’t recall. I kind of think they don’t know, except for Mick. But isn’t he a brilliant listener! And he asks nothing of them in return! They don’t have to listen in return, they can just go on and on and on about their stuff. And then they leave, having gotten what they wanted.

At the end, in his despairing loneliness, Singer kills himself and everyone is so bewildered. Why would he do that? He had all those friends!

It’s a story that has always resonated so deeply with me, and I’m feeling like Singer again (but not the shooting myself part). Ironic, I know, to talk about it here, in my solipsistic daily navel-gazing world. Here I sit, yammering on and on about whatever I think about, wonder about, feel, see, hear, me me me me me. Of course this isn’t a dialogue, this isn’t really another person listening — although you are reading it, and I know people who do read it, and occasionally a couple of you leave me a comment.  But in my real life, in my person-to-person life, I feel like Singer and it isn’t a good feeling. Thank heavens I have more resources than he did. Thank heavens, for instance, I have my daughters, who listen to me as eagerly as I listen to them, who ask how I’m doing and mean it, who share my story with me as much as we share their stories.

So on that note, I end this gloomy post on a note of very real gratitude for Katie and Marnie, for sharing our lives together. Happy Friday, y’all — I hope you have people who listen to you.

the view from my window. yuck.

Gloomy and glum — the state of affairs in my living room. Not in my head or heart, just in my living room. First, we’re covered with gray skies and clouds here in Manhattan, since Sunday, I think, and until early next week from the look of the forecast. And then there’s the scaffolding that completely blocks my view, which doesn’t help. Looking out my living room window, I see the gray corrugated metal underside of the sidewalk bridge. It completely blocks the view from mid-window up — at least I can see straight across the street! But ah, yeah, the building straight across the street also has scaffolding, and giant signs naming the scaffolding company and giant phone numbers. And rigging. It’s just a mighty glum experience, sitting in this room. I can see the trees moving in the wind, though, and when the rain breaks through I can see it coming down on the street. Gloomy.

My middle-of-the-night reading is Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation, by Elaine Pagels. It’s fascinating and well-written; Pagels is a professor of religion at Princeton and she knows her stuff. Still, I’m not sure it’s the best choice for reading in the dark between 1 and 5am, as I do most nights. All those multi-headed and -armed monsters, all the flaming swords and lakes of fire, all the wars (Armageddon and otherwise), and the judgment and damnation…..especially since I spend my days in such a gloomy room…..maybe it’s time to find a different book to read in the middle of the night. I’m taking recommendations, if you have a new favorite that kept you eagerly turning pages, something you keep telling people they just have to read.

Otherwise, 22 days until we leave for Burma, and I have an unusual mix of feelings about it. Simply, of course, I’m thrilled to be going on another exciting vacation with my husband. We travel together very well, and we love SE Asia, so there’s that plain excitement. This year, though, for the first time ever, I’m also a little bit anxious, and a little bit unnerved. Since Burma/Myanmar has been closed off for decades because of the military government, the country isn’t really tourist-ready; that doesn’t make me anxious, per se, but it does leave me wondering what it’s going to be like. When we went to Vietnam, Cambodia, India, Laos, even Borneo, I had a vague idea in my head of what it’d be like to be there. (Maybe Laos less so.) But with Burma, I can’t hold an idea in my mind about it; we’ve watched some youtube videos shot by tourists who’ve just returned, and it looks like an undeveloped Laos, maybe. Dusty streets, not at all modernized, small market stalls. I don’t know, I just can’t hold the idea of it in my head. And then there’s the political situation with the Rohingya Muslims, which has me so troubled. We were going to spend time in the western part of the country around Sittwe (we wanted to visit Mrauk U), but the Burmese started killing the Muslims, who then tried to flee across the border to China and Bangladesh, only to be turned back. The UN calls them one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. Aung San Suu Kyi has even been strangely silent about what’s happening to them, and it is quite upsetting. It’s already a very complicated place to visit, Burma, because the former military government owns so much of the country, so staying in most hotels provides financial support to them. Lonely Planet Myanmar is primarily a guidebook for how to avoid giving the government any of your tourist dollars. But in addition to that, it’s also a country that is looking the other way (at best) while some of their people are being slaughtered. It’s hard to think about the “at worst” scenario. So it’s very complicated to go there, leaving me with a mix of feelings.

I hope it’s less gloomy where you are! It helps that the Republican convention is over…..a little less rabid hate spewing into the atmosphere. Man. Happy Wednesday, y’all.

Last night I started thinking about other kinds of death, other meanings of that idea, and I realized that I’ve become aware of my aging in a new way, maybe this is what the dreams are about. Doors are closing for me, never to open again. For instance, there is no way I’m ever going to be an astronaut now. (nb: I never wanted to be an astronaut.) Or a prima ballerina. But more relevant, I’m going to be 54 in November, and who publishes their first book at that age? Odds are against me. And if the foreclosure of life-long dreams isn’t a death, what is? I’ve probably done whatever it is I’m going to do, by this point, and the rest is just a taking-in. (This sounds grim, and it doesn’t feel quite as grim to me as it sounds.) This tack made me think of Erik Erikson’s stages of development; I’d be in stage 7, where my challenge is generativity — guiding and caring for the next generation. DING DING DING! I have three children, five including my dear sons-in-law, and soon a grandchild.  Still, there is a real sense of loss when you let go of dreams that have been central to your sense of identity; how is that anything but a death?

But it ain’t over until it’s over, I also realized, and so I will keep writing. I will keep being guided by my plans and longings. We’ll see if this little progress of thoughts interrupts the river of death dreams I’ve been having. I sure hope so.

•  Another thing I’ve been thinking about is my various friendships. Most of my friends are widely interested in lots of topics (including me), but I have a couple who seem to embody that old joke: “But enough about me, let’s talk about you: what do you think about me?”  I can go along with that for a while, and I think something about the way I interact encourages that stance (something for me to think about….), but finally it gets to be too much. Jesus — enough already. We’ll see what happens when I return from my long gallivant, to Burma and back and then to Austin and back. Although I’ll be here in NYC for a week or so between trips, essentially I’ll be gone from Sep 27 until Nov 28. That’s a long old time.

• Marnie introduced me to a new writer, Leigh Stein. I want to get her book of poems titled Dispatch from the Future. Here’s one titled ‘June 14, 1848′:

Weather: hot. Health: fair.
Dear Diary, had to leave the baby
behind because she wouldn’t eat.

Sent Jon out to shoot a buffalo,
but he said they all looked so peaceful
he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Figures. We’ll all be dead soon
enough. Waiting for the Indian
to get here so we can cross

the river. June 15, 1848
Weather: still hot. Health: same.
Dear Diary, Chastity’s doll

drowned. She wanted to dive
in after it, but I reminded her
that she doesn’t know how to swim.

Dove in anyway. Another one lost.
Jon says he’ll skin us a buffalo
so we have something to eat, but

only if the buffalo has recently
died of natural causes. Get
a grip, Jon, I told him.

June 16: wagon broke.
Eating wild blackberries while
we wait for another wagon

party to come by and help.
Jon has gone off on his own
to meditate and ask forgiveness

of the earth. Prudence might
have dysentery. Figures.
June 17: Some days

I feel like I’m just a character
in a game played by a sick,
sick person, who has sent me

on this journey only to kill all
my loved ones along the way.
June 18: help came, but

in the night they stole our oxen.
Guess we’ll just have to walk
to Oregon now. Are you there,

God? It’s me, Mary Jane.
Send me some oxen and
a son who likes to shoot things.

June 19: Lost Prudence
to dysentery. Should we
eat her? Tough question.

June 20: another river!
You have got to be kidding!
June 21: Managed to swim

across with diary on top
of my head so it wouldn’t
get wet. Jon and I have found

a tribe of Indians who will let us
stay with them. At least,
we think that’s what they said.

We don’t speak their language.
They seem to have indicated that
tonight we must follow them,

blindfolded, into a grove of trees,
and in the addled darkness our
dead will return and speak to us.

Happy Tuesday-which-also-seems-like-Monday, y’all!

When I was young I didn’t think I had the courage to have children, the strength to do what was right by children, but whether I did or didn’t have those things, I brought three children into this world and they made my life worth everything. I have friends who haven’t had children, and I wonder about their lives; what must it be like to die without leaving children behind? Plenty of people do that, and I cannot imagine it. There’s the leaving-behind, and even more, there’s the bedside-surrounding. I hope to be surrounded by descendants when I leave this world; I think it will make it easier, even though there’s a way it will surely be harder.

I’ve decided to surrender my ID card for the Society of What’s It All About.

The whole hand-wringing “what does it all mean?” thing just irritates me. It means that we are here. We get this day — this day with friends, with children, by ourselves, in happiness, in misery, in boredom, it means we are here. WE ARE HERE. YOU ARE HERE. People decide it means so many things, and that’s just fine — it means whatever. It means church and service. It means intellectual pursuit. It means sitting in meetings. It means nothing. It means television. It means hedonism. It means thinking hard about what it means. It means this moment, this minute, this second.

It’s something unattainable
That you can’t live without
And now the unexplainable
Has you riddled with doubt

Things begin
Things decay
And you’ve gotta find a way
To be ok
But if you want to spend the day
Wond’ring what it’s all about
Go and knock yourself out

Why were put in this mess
Is anybody’s guess
It might be a test or it might not be anything
You need to worry about
But if you’re still in doubt
Go and knock yourself out

That’s right. Whatever you’re doing, do it. If you’re wasting time, waste it. If you’re cooking, cook it. If you’re alone, be alone! If you’re merging with someone, merge! That’s what it means.

Last month, our book club read Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story, by Jim Holt, and it just irritated the hell out of me. As I wrote in my Goodreads book review,

I haven’t argued with a book as much as this one…..ever. I was furious, outraged, bombastic. What?! How can people get away with such partial and idiotic arguments, and how can anyone take them seriously. The book irritated me, to say the least, and all I wanted to do was sit across a table from Holt and from everyone he interviewed (except David Deutsch and Steven Weinberg) and ask them if they were really kidding.

It’s an unanswerable question, why there is something rather than nothing, and anyone who says they have the answer (especially with certainty) is suspect, to say the least (and I’m trying hard to say the least, here). With such an essentially and inherently unanswerable question, the question then becomes why are you asking it? What does it mean to you? What would the various answers mean to you? THOSE are the interesting questions.

grrr. Recommended if you want to have an argument and there’s no one around.

I think people do distract themselves from their lives in so many ways — including intellectualizing the experience. It is. That’s the answer. It is. Now what?

To be honest, there’s very little of his writing that I have loved. I made it partway through Infinite Jest and partway through The Pale King. I read his collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments and simply hated it, and him. I thought he was too clever by half, at least, and something about it just annoyed the hell out of me. I’m not sure if I’d feel that way if I were to read it now; at the time I read it, I was massively overwhelmed and stressed by my life, so perhaps I just had no energy of any kind to spare. In my experience, reading anything he wrote takes energy, and I’m willing to expend energy! But something about his writing failed to connect with me, although he could write sentences in the mix that moved me nearly to tears in their honesty and ability to capture something so true. Here are two sentences I highlighted in The Pale King:

The mother at thirty with face commencing to display the faint seams of the plan for the second face life had in store for her and which she feared would be her own mother’s…

Men with leather vests and tempers who were tender when drunk in ways that made your back’s skin pebble up.

And then he also had the ability (the need, I believe) to think very deeply about things we tend to gloss over. This passage from The Pale King is basically the thesis of so much of his late work:

To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we recoil from the dull. Maybe it’s because dullness is intrinsically painful; maybe that’s where phrases like ‘deadly dull’ or ‘excruciatingly dull’ come from. But there might be more to it. Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at least from feeling directly or with our full attention. Admittedly, the whole thing’s pretty confusing, and hard to talk about abstractly… but surely something must lie behind not just Muzak in dull or tedious places anymore but now also actual TV in waiting rooms, supermarkets’ checkouts, airports’ gates, SUVs’ backseats. Walkmen, iPods, BlackBerries, cell phones that attach to your head. This terror of silence with nothing diverting to do. I can’t think anyone really believes that today’s so-called ‘information society’ is just about information. Everyone knows it’s about something else, way down.

Despite not being a fan of his actual books and writings, he touched me and continues to move me. There was something so utterly vulnerable about him, especially after he became sober and left behind his snarky irony. He could think himself into a terrible spot though — he cared a lot about being honest and genuine, then worried about the fact that he was caring about being honest and genuine, and if he’s so careful (and felt good about) being honest and genuine, how honest and genuine was he, really? Maybe he touches me because he fought so hard against depression and he just couldn’t win, not even with all his depth and intelligence.

I’m reading Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace (kindle version here), by D. T. Max, who wrote a profile of Wallace for The New Yorker six months after Wallace’s heart-wrenching suicide. I enjoyed that profile, a lot, so when I learned he was expanding it into a full-length bio (and the first bio of DFW), I was thrilled. I wanted to learn more about Wallace’s life; he’d been cagey about a great many things, including the question of whether he was in recovery, and I just wondered. I knew he’d fought depression, and of course suicide is the tragic result of that often-terminal illness, so I wanted to learn more about his experience with it, since I have so much of my own experience with it. I wondered if he’d feel like part of my tribe in some way, even though he’s so much smarter than me….like, several leagues ahead of me. I have to say that I’m extremely disappointed with the biography; it’s really just a book-length Wikipedia article. It goes into arbitrary and uninteresting detail (like what movie and which restaurant DFW went to on a date with a woman who wasn’t an important figure, just someone he dated, or that Franzen recalled that Wallace used a lot of wiper fluid on a car trip), but then glosses very quickly over what are clearly important events. There is little to no psychological interpretation, and in fact it seems like Max simply did not want to go there. I hope Blake Bailey (author of the fantastic biography of John Cheever, and another of Richard Yates) decides to write about Wallace. Now that would be a book to buy in hardback.

As I’ve been reading, though, I’ve been collecting and gathering related material, so I place it here for my reference and for yours, if you’re a DFW fan like me:

• From The Awl, an article titled “Inside David Foster Wallace’s Private Self-Help Library“. All Wallace’s papers are now at UT-Austin; perhaps I’ll go see them when I’m there.
• Craig Fehrman, writing for Chicago Reader, also didn’t like Max’s biography — among other reasons, it failed to consider Wallace as a midwestern writer.
• Wallace was on the Charlie Rose Show (disclaimer: I absolutely detest Charlie Rose) a few times. It was startling to hear Wallace’s voice, which I’d never heard before. Here’s the first of 4 parts:

• Here is Wallace’s Amazon page, with links to all his published books.
• Michael Silverblatt (host of KCRW’s great program, Bookworm) talked with or about Wallace several times. Here’s a link to all those wonderful programs.
• And then here’s a great interview in The Believer with Michael Silverblatt, who — not for nothing — is a spectacular reader. In the linked interview he talks about his conversation with Kurt Vonnegut, who autographed a book for Silverblatt and gave him his telephone number because “he was so lonely.” Silverblatt is a fantastic conversationalist, I can imagine Vonnegut longed to have someone like him to talk to.
• Wallace had a terrible affair with Mary Karr; here’s an interview with her from The Paris Review, and here’s her author page on Amazon. If you haven’t read The Liars’ Club yet, you’ve missed out, I’m telling you.

I’m just at the point in the memoir where Wallace moves to California and begins wrestling The Pale King into existence so the heartbreak is still to come. If you’re like me and really feel drawn to Wallace, read the bio anyway even though it’s not such a great bio.

My husband cooks for us every day — magnificent meals, spicy and rich and so full of flavor my mouth starts watering before he even begins, in anticipation. He’ll make us gravlax, if the fresh salmon looks great. He makes our mustard. And every summer he keeps me in homemade pickles, spicy as hell, the way I like them.  He started collecting little kirby cucumbers last night and this morning, and now he’s making the brine. He called me into the kitchen a minute ago: “Honey, you want to come see how many pickles I’m making for you?” And I dashed into the kitchen to see the very large sink half-filled with cukes. Two giant stock pots out, ready to fill with his delicious brine. Loads of dill and garlic and peppers and spices and my mouth is watering just typing these words.

pickles from a couple of summers ago, ready to eat

I’ll have to wait a few days until they’re ready to eat, and knowing me I’ll start trying them way too early, which will only make me hungrier and more eager for them. Aren’t I so very lucky? I know I am.

Happy Saturday, y’all, and happy 3-day weekend!

my great-grandmother (2nd from the right), Lottie Ribble Askew

Since I grew up in an old-timey rural church, there was lots of singing (sang-in, as we pronounced it) of gospel tunes. When we were just hanging around the house, or the yard, in need of something to sing or hum we’d go for a little Rock of Ages, or How Great Thou Art (although that one’s kinda tough, in the same way the Star Spangled Banner is tough, with very high and low ranges in the same song). But those were the old standards — everyone who was anyone knew those.

The Loving Highway Church of Christ had red hymnals that smelled such a particular way, if I ever encounter that smell again I might crack open and die of shock. Those hymnals were filled with the standards, and also with plenty of songs that were apparently more obscure, since I never encountered them in big, fancier churches. When we’d walk into the church, the page numbers for the songs we’d sing during the service were posted on boards on either side of the preacher, and since we didn’t have any musical instruments (“thou shalt add nothing to nor take away from the word of the Lord” though we did have air conditioning….), we relied on the song leader to organize us. He — always a he, women weren’t allowed to speak or lead anything — stood up front and with his right hand, directed us and also showed us where the notes hit relative to each other. When his hand went up so did the note, down, down, up up up higher higher higher. My mother always sang harmony, so that’s how I learned all those old songs. I don’t know the melody lines of them, but I can do a mean old harmony, man.

When my great-grandmother, the woman in the pioneer bonnet above (Lottie), was very old and senile, she lived in a nursing home. Her daughter (my grandmother) was her roommate; my grandmother was in such poor health she needed constant care. My great-grandmother, however, was as healthy as a horse and could beat me in a race around the home, she just didn’t know anything from one minute to the next. Used to drive my grandmother crazy, all day long, because she didn’t know who she was. “Mother, do you know who I am?” “Well, you look like a very nice lady.” “Mother, it’s me, your daughter Lorene.” “I used to have a daughter named Lorene, and another named Mazelle.” “Yes Mother, I’m your daughter Lorene.” “Well isn’t that nice. Are you from round here?” My grandmother never found a way to be easy with it. For her, it was very Sartrean, No Exit.

All day long, my great-grandmother sat in her chair with her big black purse hanging on her arm (filled with many pairs of her giant old lady underwear), waiting to go somewhere, to a particular Thanksgiving supper back in the 1930s. While she waited, she’d rock back and forth a little and clap softly and sing “This world is not my home /I’m just a-passing through. / If heaven’s not my home / oh Lord what will I do? / The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door / and I can’t be at home in this world anymore.”

Now and then she’d mix it up: “I’ve got a mansion / just over the hilltop / in that bright land where / we’ll never grow old / and someday yonder / we will never more wander / but walk the streets that / are purest gold (are purest gold).” Elvis Himself covered this one, in his wonderful gospel album:

I can sing these old songs in my sleep (and have, once or twice). The altar call songs were DREADFUL and dirge-y. ‘Tis midnight and on Olive’s brow, the star is dimmed that lately shown; tis midnight in the garden now, the suffering savior prays alone. OR, for variety, Abba Father, Father, if indeed it may, let this cup of anguish, pass from me, I pray / yet if it must be suffered, by me thine only son / Abba Father, Father, let thy will be done. Let they will be done. I responded to altar call at least every other week, drowning in a sense of my wormy unworthiness. Who was I to sit there all lazy when Jesus was doing all that! We went to church three times a week (Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday evening) and I was a frequent visitor at the altar, confessing my sinful ways and repenting and begging for forgiveness. The preacher would listen to me, and when the altar call song ended he’d turn to the congregation and say that sister Lori is in need of our prayers, so the whole congregation would be praying for my wayward soul. Maybe, now that I think about it, that’s why I survived.

Happy Friday. I am indeed satisfied with just a cottage…in Manhattan. But I’d like a little more silver, and a bit more gold please.

On the train, I finished reading David Rakoff’s last book, Half Empty, which was dark and funny, and so very very sad. The final chapter was about the recurrence of cancer that killed him, so of course we read it knowing how it all turned out for him. He was such a lovely and complicated man. Although I highlighted many long passages, some hilarious bits, some poignant bits, and some great word choices, I’ll just share a couple here and hope you read the book.

He was describing the movie “The Other Side of the Mountain,” based on the life of Jill Kinmont, who was paralyzed in a skiing accident. I remember watching it when I was a kid (it was released in 1975) and feeling All The Tragedy Of Her Brilliant Life, so this made me laugh, when he wrote: “See it. You’ll cry from beginning to end, especially if you’re ten and gay.”

This tiny little snippet cracked me up. He was describing a Scandinavian short story: “…one day Satan himself visits, along with his great-grandmother–who is, not surprisingly, a total fucking bitch.”

But that gives you the wrong impression, those two little snips, because it’s not at all twee and snarky, it’s deeply compassionate and funny and sad. Read it, you’ll be glad.

And I’m reading a new author, to me — Etgar Keret, an Israeli writer of short stories. I can’t remember, now, how I heard about him, but I feel like I may be the last person to find him because he’s been on This American Life, published in The New Yorker, interviewed in The Believer, and profiled in The Guardian, just for starters. I’m reading Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories (kindle), a collection of the wildest, strangest, twistiest turniest short stories you can imagine. They’re typically quite short, so you can quickly toss back a few in a sitting, but they’re so strange and twisty it’s better to savor them and restrict yourself to reading one or two at a time. I read them in the middle of the night, in the dark on my phone, which enhances their strangeness. Not always, but most of the time there’s a big surprise in the plot, or the story idea is just so completely novel that my eyes get big as I see what he’s doing. Pure delight, in nearly every story. Also highly recommended if you’re in the market for a new book or author!

It’s another absolutely gorgeous day here in Manhattan, and Thursday already! Thursday before a three-day weekend, so it has a little extra spice. I hope it’s beautiful where you are, and that you are at least half as happy as I am.

I took this picture in Rhinebeck and the Sheep & Wool Festival a couple of years ago.

Today, though, I’m having a big treat. I’m taking the subway to Penn Station where I’ll board an Amtrak train and head north, to Rhinecliff. My friend Marta will pick me up and we’ll drive to Rhinebeck, where she works at the Omega Institute. We’ll have a lovely vegetarian lunch, we may go out in a little boat, on the lake, and a couple of hours later she’ll take me back to Rhinecliff where I’ll board a return train, back at Penn Station around 5:30. What an unusual and wonderful day, right? And it’s going to be sunny and 75 in Rhinebeck, an absolutely perfect kind of day for this type of adventure.

Breakfast last weekend with two old friends, dinner last night with an old friend, lunch today with a new friend. Email correspondence fast and furious with a middle friend (who will become an old friend). Phone calls and emails with daughters, also fast and furious. Social connections all around, I am lucky lucky lucky, and don’t I know it. Happy Wednesday, y’all — I’m not sure yours can be as nice as mine, but I sure hope it is!