My maniacal devotion as a blogger is such that I feel horrendous guilt for almost allowing 48 hours to pass without a post. So here’s what I’ve been so busy doing instead…. (I believe this accounts for all 48 hours, although I only did the math once so it’s probably wrong.)
18 hours of sleep and bed-dwelling.
8 hours of work-work. Have you ever been in a really long meeting, and your brain suddenly announces to itself “You are the smartest person in this room,” and some other, more humble zone of your brain retorts “That’s impossible, because you’re the lowest paid person in the room” and the bold brain zone says “So? I could run this company in my sleep, but who needs the stress, the responsibility, the ass-kissing?” and the humble brain zone replies “Shut-up and pay attention! Our jaw is slackening.”
4 hours of cooking and eating. This would usually be more except last night’s dinner was a pre-Symphony pizza grab.
3 hours of consulting work. I love consulting. So quick and efficient: Company emails task to consultant, consultant completes task while sitting on couch in sweatpants, consultant sends company bill. Such an uncomplicated relationship.
3 hours of walking in the cool December sunshine.
3 hours of newspaper reading, web surfing, email, journal writing, and writing this.
3 hours of commuting, which involves more walking in the cool December sunshine and more newspaper reading.
2 hours 30 minutes of Boston Symphony Orchestra. A special treat on last night’s program was conductor James Levine and renowned pianist Daniel Barenboim doing a duet on the piano — the same piano — of Schubert’s F Minor Fantasy for piano four-hands. We were sitting to the far left of the stage but in the very first row, so our view was of Levine and Barenboim’s backs, sitting next to each other in front of the obscured keyboard. The Fantasy layers textured melodies that are at times sweet, at times apprehensive, and it was fascinating to see these two old men’s sturdy backs swaying and buckling as they labored over the keyboard. Mr. P called our point of view “erotic,” but I think — nay, hope — he meant “voyeuristic” or some other non-sexual word.
90 minutes of hair salon. After my blondness is renewed, I ask for “just a trim.” My hairdresser grins and says, “Didn’t you say you were going to cut off your hair after the wedding?” I assure her, “I’m letting myself go in other ways.”
1 hour of bookstore browsing, during which I read 20 pages of Proust was a Neuroscientist before I declined to buy it.
1 hour of housework. Yes, damned house still hasn’t learned to clean up after itself.
