Thank you, Ira Glass

for my new mantra: it can take eight years, sometimes, to get really good at something.
Thank you, Jackie Wilson, for Higher and Higher. I sang it this morning, some of the time through tears and all of the time with the windows open.
Thank you, spring, for finally deciding to show up
Thank you, bulbs, for ignoring the directions on the package (to get into the ground last fall )and growing anyway

I told Jim that I thought we should move to DC, and he didn't say no. What you have to know about Jim is that he usually says no first. I have learned not to get upset about it, he usually doesn't mean it or at least he usually changes his mind. As they say in education, he is slow to transition. I told my Mom that I think she should move to DC too and she didn't say no either. A while back Jim and I were really close to moving to North Carolina, but it turns out that it is beautiful and boring. I want to live where it is green! And NC is so lush, but when the time came to decide whether to go or stay, we stayed in WI. It's the summers; they lull you into loving the midwest again and again. There isn't much in the midwest, besides the weather, for which to find fault and in the summer you just forget. But what about diversity? I miss diversity, something my neighborhood is lacking. My Mom always joked that my preschool class looked like the UN- William from Venezuela, Mario from Greece, Julie from Japan, Christian from Austria... In middle school my parents sent me to a lab school whose population equally represented each ethnicity in the city. Every year for Dr. King's birthday we had an all-school celebration with speakers from the community. That seems unreal, but it did happen. I want that for my kids. I would love to be able to tell my kids that we set out in search of the best place from which they could meet the rest of the world. Is that DC? I don't know, maybe I was looking at it through cherry-blossom pink glasses, but it smelled so good. It smelled like spending summers in Atlanta with my Grandma and Grandpa, like wet pine needles under foot. My Grandma is in DC at the moment, her memory resting in Arlington with her little 'nita. Washington DC holds many memories for the Harpers, maybe I felt that. When I heard a car radio playing Please Mr. Postman and I thought about my Mom and Julie getting ready for dances at the Naval Academy.
I can't believe I'm thinking of moving. I just got a great job, working among inspiring teachers, but I feel a nagging to be living on purpose.