I am sitting in my pale gray womb chair, feet propped on its matching ottoman, everything from the waist down blanketed by a corally-pink and white throw. It's a muted pink, not saccharine or sickly, but rather a nod to my love of the color, to the need I feel to sometimes throw a bit of not blue-gray-brown into my masculine'ish love child of a modern + mid-century home.

I've had a love affair with pink for as long as I can remember, and I am A-OK with that. There is really quite a diverse spectrum housed under the umbrella term "pink." Really, it runs the gamut from the blindingly neon to the loud but infused-with-purple magenta to the horrid, too flatly opaque Pepto shade through the perfect English roses and ethereal peonies to the pale-but-not-anemic lighter shades.

Hot pink, piglet pink, baby girl pink, Carnation pink (that disappointing Crayola hue that never seems to assert itself)...The list goes on, but suffice it to say that I am, mostly, a fan.

Which is why I bought this throw that, in all honesty, matches almost nothing in my home but goes well enough with this chair (which is mine; I got it for my 40th birthday) and makes me happy.

The point of this early-onset tangent is a slight one. It's simply to place you just a touch, because tonight I am pooped and have retired to my chair and the quietude of my room early tonight.

Tom has been home since March 1 (he is enjoying a much-deserved vacation between jobs before starting his new role as CFO at a company here in DC on March 20) which has been both rare treat and alone-time zapper, the kids have had irregular school schedules due to various holidays, conferences, and the pending snowstorm which two hours ago meant a preemptive canceling of school tomorrow, and that behemoth mulch pile that both took many more days than expected to deal with AND is still not fully dealt with. Tonight found me mulching neighbor's yards, random neighborhood trees, and offering with exceedingly enthused madness "all the mulch you want" to anyone who passed by.

Life is so much about finding our rhythms, isn't it? For those of us who thrive on routinized days, from the highly structured to the more relaxed here's-what-I-might-do-around-mealtimes approach, for those who find structure imposed on them via children or career or other duties, the removal of that overlay can be both exciting and stressful.

What I have noticed is that in times of flux, the non-necessities and "luxuries" easily, too easily, fall by the wayside. Sure, the mulch juggernaut loomed, but what really beckoned was an empty page, empty pages ignored for weeks now.

This evening, a friend mused about thinking now about the answer to 'what do I want the story of my life to be later, when I'm reaching the end and looking back?' And really, that's a great North Star to keep in mind.

To another friend struggling with a shitty week I wrote, "Literally right now writing about the times in which 'normal' routine falls by the wayside and what gets left in its wake. I am seeing, literally now b/c I'm hellbent on writing even if its crap, that what is flotsam and jetsam in the wake are the things, like writing, that keep me sane. So clearly those things are wrongly labeled f & j and I need to more unapologetically value them."

Funny how sometimes all the roads lead you to a pale gray chair and a corally-pink throw and a glass of wine and the loving response to your kids and husband that "No, I'm off duty now. I'm on my own clock now. I'll see you tomorrow."