19 February 2003 - 10:35 p.m.

I initially checked this story out because the headline made no sense. The story itself is cool, though: "So, I received this stack of music . . ."

Come to think of it, that may have been the sexiest thing I've read about all week.

(Granted, I've been devouring a bunch of children's books, but still. . .)

". . .it seems appropriate that her 1962 daily calendar tells us that she had lamb on her grocery list the day before she wrote Mary's Song." - Kate Moses, Baking With Sylvia

At the moment, I have anise biscotti baking in the oven. Before that, I made a batch of almond macaroons, but left them in a trifle too long (they're still sort of edible, but the undersides have a solid coating of char, and the Beautiful Young Man snickered gently when he peered at them). For dinner, I set the bread machine to produce a loaf of oatmeal-honey bread, heated a can of corn, and put together a pan of chicken paprika (M'ris's rhapsody to good Hungarian food made me hungry for something like).

In a few minutes, it will be time to take out the cookie sheet, slice the rolls of dough into biscotti segments, and set them back into the oven. Then it will be time to fetch the laundry from the dryer, and then to sit back down and write. I've been doing everything but all day (mopping up pet puke, scrubbing the blades of the bathroom ceiling fan, sorting receipts, chopping almonds, laughing at the dog as she chases the occasional piece that bounces away. . .) but the shapes of what I want to draft, they're closer to the pen than they were this morning.

One year ago: 'Today's Yiddish word (fished out of the magnetic poetry kit on my desk): "oyb."'