At this moment in time ...

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Alright blog, what have you got for me today?

This feels like a day for random bits. Things I want to remember about this very moment in time.

**My two eldest children, at this moment in time, have exactly the same shoe size as me. And apparently I have a lot of shoes, because right now my eldest wears a pair of my old running shoes as his indoor shoes at school, another pair as his outdoor shoes, and his winter boots were also formerly mine; and just this morning AppleApple took my pink lightweight tennis shoes to school to be her new indoor shoes. She's outgrown her old ones. She's also outgrown all soccer shoes. And this morning started with a lengthy search through her drawers for clothes that still fit. Suddenly all pants are rising above the ankle, and all shirts above the wrist. The very definition of a growth spurt.

**I'm plugging away at my multi-sport activities. This morning was spin class. Do I push too hard in this class? I really give it my all, leave everything in the room; and then look up with glazed eyes at the end of hour and realize it is 7:15am and the bulk of the day's responsibilities still lie before me.

**I had my first DNF in a race on Sunday. It was a 30km race, and given my injury I could neither train for it, nor hope to complete the distance. I'd accepted that it wasn't to be a few months ago, but hearing people in spin class this morning talk about their experiences in the same race made me more than a little envious. I feel like I'm holding steady in terms of my fitness. Barely. After such exciting gains last year, it's difficult to stay positive about just hanging in there. But just hanging in takes commitment too. And I haven't quit. Four early mornings a week is four more than I was doing two years ago. It's hard to remember sometimes, but daily commitment and discipline isn't often or even usually about an immediate reward, nor does it happen because we feel like doing it every day. It's about making change over time, the steady accretion of experience. Mostly, it's just about showing up.

**I'm starting to do research on what I hope will be my next book. Kevin and I have marked several writing weeks on the calendar, one per month for the next three months. I'm nervous about diving into a new character and a new world. But I'm curious to see what will come of it. Stay tuned.

**Remember when I used to get a good revelation after most yoga classes? Not necessarily an enormous life-altering revelation, but at least something small, some interesting new way of approaching a problem or idea? And that doesn't seem to happen any more. It's made me wonder whether I've stopped looking for revelations. Am I going to class free from specific unsolved problems? Or have I forgotten to use that time as a meditative space? I'm not sure. In any case, I took a nice long shavasana yesterday evening, and emerged with the notion that I should learn how to write screenplays. Is that nutty? Maybe it was sparked by reading this article in yesterday's Globe and Mail about the slow decline of the novel, and the rise of awesome tv shows. A large part of being a writer (for me) is wanting to express ideas and be read, to provide entertainment but also food-for-thought -- to an audience. I never got around to writing in-depth about Mordecai Richler's biography, but one of the things that impressed me about his career was its breadth across the mediums. He wrote frequently for television and radio, and in his early career worked on many screenplays for which he received no credit, but obviously gained valuable experience. Would my abilities fit into other mediums of expression? ... that was yesterday's take-home yoga "revelation."

**But I'm too tired this morning to follow up. On just about anything. So a quick and dirty blog post it is. And catching up on emails.

**And running birthday party errands for an almost-four-year-old; that will be this afternoon's main task. The bar for today is set pretty low. I was just glad to get laundry in the washer, and soup in the crockpot after waving the kids off to school this morning.

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