this moment

This is where I am right now, operating on blind faith... and a good bit of honest hard work, by me and everyone at Scholastic. I'm in NYC now (this restaurant is just north of Chicago, in Evanston, Illinois, and where I had lunch yesterday), and I'm about to go to lunch with the Countdown team -- I hope my make-up doesn't start to run when I meet the folks who have meant so much to me and have held me up, like scaffolding, as we've toiled on Countdown.

The road can feel like careening from one thing to the next, and like there is not one minute to rest or restore... so yesterday, I stayed put instead of getting on a plane.  Jim and I stole a few hours away, and spent it with our friend Dan, who chauffered us around Chicago in his fabulous 1987 Oldsmobile Delta 88.

 Look at those jackets and hats! It's cold by the lake. Jim wanted to check out the dog park.

 The best part of the day was spending some time here:

After the buzz-buzz-go-go and hard work of a roudy and fabulous convention, which, as you know, is wonderful but can turn one inside-out, the slow unfolding of a day off-the-clock, and the unhurried pace of a place like this reminds me to be mindful, to savor each moment, in that moment. We sat here for a while, yesterday... and the tears came. And came. Silent, and slow, like  a release of all I had held on to, the past few days.

As we left, the monk who lives here gave us apples. "Go practice," he said to me. "Be happy."

I am stepping out the door of this hotel with a good bit of blind faith, luck, and hard work in my hand, stepping into my own good life, this minute. I am practicing. I am happy.