Phew

Have you ever had a day that felt like a movie? The kind where at any moment, you could burst into song with choreography and colors seem uncannily vivid? (And not the kind of movie that I typically live, which would be a low-resolution film docu-drama comprised of 10,000 hours of me sitting in front of a computer monitor.) I had one of those days today. It was probably 70% of the excitement level of what is pictured to the right: when we had Sleeping Beauty show up at my daughter's birthday party, and kids' mouths just fell open when she walked through the door. I'm talking A-list-princess-starstruck, like these kids just couldn't believe it -- I guess the comparable for me would be if Conan O'Brien suddenly appeared at my door, because I think he's so funny it would suddenly make me completely un-funny and I wouldn't know what to say and would kick myself later after thinking of all the funny things I could have said and come to think of it would be a pretty bad experience. Anyway, it wasn't like that. But it was 70% of the way there.

It started off with a pretty good night's sleep...and successful completion of work-related tasks I won't go into. So I felt really giddy all day, like George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life after he comes back from his, uh, hallucinations and goes around hugging people and giving them money (or do other people give him money? Hey...the movie is better). And strangely, when I picked up the kids from school, they seemed to sense this mom-doesn't-seem-crazy-today vibe and were happy and laughing...and after school, because I no longer had this hanging over my head nor had to log onto my computer as soon as I got home, I actually played games with them and interacted with them for the first time in, well, forever, and it was fun. I even put a jazz CD on while I was doing the dishes after dinner, and it was strangely pleasurable, clearing up the kitchen. So maybe I have developed some kind of chemical imbalance in my brain.

Anyway, I also brought a cute little gadget with me to work today. It's a tea pot with an infuser like the one I've linked to here except that the one I bought came from a Chinese grocery store and cost $5.99. I've been a fan of drinking green teas lately, particularly the ones with loose tea leaves that unfold when infused into enormous leaves like some kind of magic '80s toy, with the idea that somehow the anti-oxidants are going to eventually turn me into a 20-year-old. They're really messy if you don't have a removable infuser. Plus, with these types of tea leaves (available at your local Asian grocery, but in my case, purchased from Taiwan) you can re-use the tea leaves a few times -- probably somewhere around three. I think my new little teapot added to the excitement of the day. And maybe there were hallucinogens in the tea.