Groundwork for Success. Or Just Groundwork.

Okay, this doesn't have much to do with success, but oh well. More on that to come - and that's a threat. Meanwhile, here are some of the reasons why I haven't been thinking all that much about success: Highlights of the last week, which overlapped with the end of school vacation:

Felt annoyed that unlike NYC, our city didn’t manage to plan for spring break to encompass both Passover and Easter, but only Easter, which left every lapsed reform Jew I know to have a seder on Good Friday or Saturday of Easter weekend, still technically Passover, but not the first or second night of it, as it should be.

Had my fourth round of venom immunotherapy. That's venom therapy for stinging insect allergy, to clarify - allergy shots, to the uninitiated. My arms didn’t go insane this time. Insane in this case means swelling up an entire sleeve size and itching so much I was afraid I’d turn into that woman who had a chronic itch in her head that was so constant that she actually scratched a hole into her skull. Yes, that is right. So, yes, they – the arms - did go insane the time before last, but last time, they only swelled up a bit, and they only itched for two and a half days, and with Allegra and Benadryl at night, and ice packs during the day, I was able to keep my arms.

Was gripped with awareness of impending loss of elder daughter, who will be going to college in three years (never too early to start mourning) and therefore insisted on a family trip to the smallest, sorriest butterfly house you can imagine, full of rotting fruit and grownups who disobeyed the only rule there: (Please) do not pick up the butterflies. There were more people than butterflies in this house, and all the grown up people were stumbling around with their fingers out, scooping up butterflies from rotting fruit. Ah, family outings.

Meditated several times without changing in any essential way.