One profound change...

...since I became a parent is that I actually look forward to time spent alone in a doctor's or dentist's waiting room--if it means I can read something: a book I brought, or even a two-year-old New Yorker.

Reading time without kids, without cleaning to do or groceries to buy or bills to pay, reading time without guilt. A fleetingly short sweet time.

inside the music

I've just started playing piano again. I'm no better than I was in high school, which is not much better than I was in Junior High, and I'm not trying to play anything I didn't know then.

But it is so soothing to the spirit to be playing music again. I'd forgotten what it was like.

You could hire the world's best pianist to play for you whenever you wished, and it wouldn't give you what mediocre playing of your own produces--an ability to be inside the music.

Children, everyone, take up an instrument. It's really worth it.

supermarket smoke

There's no smoking allowed in the store, but employees sit just outside at picnic tables smoking. I have to walk my kids through the smoke. I have to breathe the smoke. Back in March, a grocery store employee was hit by an errant car while he was taking a break outside.

Supermarkets, please find a place in back of the store for employees to smoke.

coffee at the pump

I was at the self-serve gas station in the rain watching an electronic ad that said "come inside for a cup of hot coffee." I didn't want to go inside. That's why I'm swiping my card outside. I don't want to interact with a human. I don't want to lock up my car. I don't want to stand in line at the cash register.

The gas station that figures out how to serve a decent dollar cup of coffee at the pump will do a great business.