1. Up before the alarm, sweaty, mushed between the two of them. 

2. Learning to love these dark mornings to absorb the quiet before the day begins. 

3. Tuesdays are my favorite days. I say this every Tuesday. It is always so true. 

4. I ask for conversations to be had and for peace. These two things feel opposed. But I need my whole home to be in order. 

5. I miss kicking through the big piles of leaves that collected on the sidewalks. This reminds me that I promised myself I would take more walks. 

6. Potatoes in the oven. The oldest and the youngest at playdates. I go from closet to basement to closet to find bits of pieces of myself to stick up on a wall, tuck into a corner. I dig out some old artwork from the kids and add them to the clipboards. I fill the empty frame with squares of California. I stare at the frame—the 12 squares of California and rattle off the vineyard, the location, the sidewalk. The last picture is of my feet stepping on the fallen olives in front of Spottswoode in St. Helena. 

7. Blue cheese sauce. The remainder of Steady State.

8. Election results. 

9. "I don't want to live where there are any extremes. Unless it's Kindness. I only want to live where the extreme is Kindness."

10. This is kind of how I expected it would feel but those are not the words I expected to hear.