My Favorite Fall Mornings

Today we're sipping coffee, listening to NPR, and watching the kids make something out of nothing (well, they have a cardboard box and some tape). The sun is shining in on us, I hear the heat kicking on, and there are remains of color on the trees peeking in through the windows. These are my favorite types of mornings. Thursdays tend to be a pajama morning at our house since it's the morning after BJ has finished teaching for the week and before he dives into paper writing and other school work. Thursdays are also my favorite edition of the New York Times because both of my favorite columns run: Gail Collins' opinion and Michelle Slatalla's "wife/mother/worker/spy." If I only get to read the paper one morning a week I'd pick Thursdays over any other day just to read those two pieces, which are far cleverer than anything I'd ever write. So maybe you should close this blog and go read their articles instead.

This morning I am delaying the inevitable topic of the month: we spent a good deal of time raking leaves this week (not my favorite fall activity), and it's not encouraging to see how many leaves are still covering our yard. But Toby's been a big help this year (a little more than last year). I know I whine a lot about raking leaves, but it's like whining about getting out the door and going on a run. I'll be doing it either way, and I'd much rather rake a half an acre of leaves with a four year old than write a term paper on realism-imitating counterfactuals or something on human rights.** I value these mornings more than almost any other time during the week and I just thought I'd share them with you. Now I'm off to crack open the NYT and check out a better column than this one. (However, neither of them have adorable pictures of children, so keep coming back if you want to see them.)

**These are papers that BJ has to finish in the next two weeks before he heads to Spain to present on "institutional accounts of correlative duties" at a human rights conference. I'm so glad he's getting his PhD instead of me, aren't you? :)