zirconium | absent-mindedness and minding things.

There was a lot of sunshine today -- it was beautiful at the lake, gleaming on the jet black necks of geese and the different browns of fresh mulch and the white froth of rushing water -- and also a lot of absent-mindedness. I left my phone at home during my first round of errands. The exterminator left his clipboard on our porch. The contractor left the garage door open. (It's a good thing I happened to be taking the laundry downstairs.)

Peacocks in the parlor at Graceland

After all that running around, I am staying home tonight, working on a manuscript and painting my toenails blue.

Today's quote comes from a 1983 lecture by Katherine Paterson:

A year ago January I hit a section in my current novel which had me convinced that I was never, never, never going to be able to finish it. Painfully, I announced this sad fact to my husband, who said: "Oh, you've reached that stage." And he proceeded to remind me that in every novel there is that THERE-IS-NO-WAY-I-CAN-FINISH-THIS-BOOK stage. I don't care to be told in a crisis of mortal agony that I am merely passing through a thoroughly predictable stage -- one that I have successfully travered six times and am certain to do so again. So I took my anguish to my friend and fellow writer, Mary Lee Settle, with whom I share frequent Szechwan lunches. "I'll never learn to write," I moaned over the hot sour soup. "I'm such a dodo. Nothing I've ever done ever helps me with anything else."

"No," said this woman who is one of America's finest novelists. "NO, you've learned one thing from those six other books. You've learned that a novel can be finished, and that tells you that you can finish this one."

- The Kerlan Awards in Children's Literature, 1975-2001 (Pogo Press, 2001)

P.S. I am charmed by this report from today's Tennessean:

What came across at the dinner, Newkirk said, was the president's commitment "to the average person like me, to making sure that I have the ability to have a better life."

She was floored when Obama took out a pen at the table and jotted a thank-you note to a friend of one of the other couples at the table for watching the couple's two children during the dinner.

"It was really amazing to me that the president of the United States would take time out of his schedule to write a note to one of the attendee's baby-sitters," she said with a laugh.