You know what I think?

I think I'd like to go back to India. I really miss it and have been thinking about our old hometowns and all our friends in them quite a lot lately. I don't want to live there again, mind you. Just have a good long extended visit. At least a month in Ladakh - ok, a whole summer - and then onto Varanasi for as long as I can stand it and then Delhi, Pune and Goa until I am good and done in all regards. Or perhaps I'd like a 3-month tour of all the places we didn't get to, but wanted to visit. Ghost of Sen. Fulbright, can you hear me? The magic word is f-u-n-d-i-n-g...

Also, I think I ought to find out who Thomas Keller is. I have a recipe for his brownies taped up to my cabinet and as I wander the interwebs I keep bumping into "Thomas Keller's Pot Pie" or "Thomas Keller's Spaghetti Sauce" or "Thomas Keller's Peanut Butter and Crackers". What's the deal? Who is this guy and why do we care how he makes the most basic of dishes? (HIS brownies are iffy. Not as good as mine, even without salad dressing.)

I'm psyched to be a Girl Scout leader again, and double psyched that I don't have to have anything to do with managing our cookie sale.

I have to learn how to better interact with people who tell me quite seriously that they love global warming, and that maybe its just the earth finally getting back up to the "right" temperature.

Tracking our every expenditure for the entire month is simultaneously excruciatingly painful, satisfying to my meticulous-saurus side, and oddly liberating. (See! Its all the damn food! Not the little treats I buy myself! If only we ate less! More treats!) (Oh lord. I need such help.)

I'm curious to see what "Lee-Jackson Day" is all about. You guessed it - a Lexington-only holiday to commemorate our to favorite biggots OOPS! I mean heroes. A friend pointed out that L-J Day falling just 2 days after MLKJr day meant the two sort of cancelled each other out - like holding a Nazi Pride Fest just after Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Rememberance Day). There are American flags out all over town and nothing of consequence closed on Monday... wonder what tomorrow holds?

Caitlin has started swimming again, on the local winter team at the community pool. She's pleased with the shape she's in, having a blast, and thrilled to have the chance to swim 4 nights a week. Rockin. Now Ben wants in too.

I've slipped from conscious competence to unconscious competence with a lot of my baking/cooking. Vegan dinner is now a given, and loaves of good ol' sandwich bread issue forth from my oven at the drop of a hat. It is totally standard for me to crank out, from scratch, a baked dessert, bread and a full vegan dinner most days of the week. Cool.

The exterior of the house however, has gone to pot. The kids are so excited about the warm weather that they are outside all the time, which is awesome. But their crap is everywhere, which isn't. They are also building a club house and trying to thaw out our upper pond with some rather creative tools.

Today there were 12 youths at my house for the better part of the day (2 under 2). Awesome.

I need to get better at not wishing my current homeschooling group was my old homeschooling group. The new group has some lovely people in it, including some dear friends. It is what it is. Got to stop going to that hardware store for my loaf of bread.

And I'm hoping and wishing and squeezing my thumbs so hard that I'll get one of those last few spots at the Madison homeschool conference next month. But even if I don't we're still going home for a week or so.

And last, I toyed with declaring the 2009-2010 academic year my Year of Selfish Knitting. But I have some plum-wonderful sisters-in-law and they need some baby alpaca love. Sure hope someone can give me a ride to knitting tomorrow night.

So. Now you know!