When my Wired Magazine comes in the mail each month, I immediately flip to the back to the Colophon, where the parties responsible list the sacred little things that helped them lug that issue to press (a wonderful reminder that the end result’s best stories reside in all that comes before ….)

Saturday mornings being a perfect time for caffeinated reflection, here’s what got me through the cold, gray week, in no particular order … 

• popping a new CD in my car player for, like, the first time in years. Last month WQED-FM was offering as a thank-you gift a collection of music from the Mr. Rogers show. Climbing in the car and peeling the protective cellophane like unwrapping a present before I turn the key. Soundtracking a new week’s commute with Fred singing over Johnny Costa’s dancing fingers … making Monday feel like a Tuesday. 
• staring out my downstairs morning window and watching a trio of cemetery deer give each other baths. Karry, who keeps track of such things, pointing out that they are three generations, a Mom and babies from different seasons. It’s genuinely the loveliest thing. They take turns. The one standing in the middle alternates between the one on her right and her left, who stand patient and still.  In my reverie, thinking of Joni Mitchell singing, “I want to shampoo you. I want to renew you again and again.” Nature and Joni reminding us to take good care of each other.
• standing in line for soup at the coffee shop down the road and eavesdropping on the two young men in front of me, the one talking about the slasher screen play he’s currently working on. Hot chicken gnocchi soup on a cold, gray day. 
• breakfast for dinner Wednesday night … Emma crisping the bacon perfect
• first to the kitchen in the morning, the cats trailing behind, Roman, he of the greater appetite, barking hangry, and the scripted routine of them tussling, Viktor ending it (as always) by biting his little brother’s ear, as I crack open their tiny morning can and split it between them … making sure Viktor gets a little bit more, knowing that Roman will lick up all the leftovers.
• hustling to the Mall Thursday night, for their annual holiday ‘parade,’ which was forced indoors by the cold … the melancholy of seeing an abandoned mall still decorated as if….
• the incongruity of the setting melting when Emma brings out her tap board, places it on the slippery surface, and proceeds to throw down … a routine she choreographed herself, a practiced improvisation, me mesmerized by her flying feet and the board beneath, praying it doesn’t slip from under her, it doesn’t, she won’t let it, wow, and, as with all good stuff, over before you know it …. 
• walking into Appleby’s (always an anthropological expedition) afterwards with Karry, and her picking up on the true meaning of the eff-bombing, outdoor-smoking dude’s comment to his colleague, “I don’t trust it until I wake up the next morning.” As we take our seats, Karry interpreting for me, “He’s talking about his weed.” Grateful for my co-pilot who has always caught the much that I miss.
• the annual office Thanksgiving pot-luck, crock pot nirvana, me missing most of it on a call, but second-hand smoking the music of reverberating laughter
• season 6, episode 20 of Murder She Wrote with Karry in her recliner, Emma in her chair, me wrongly guessing first the sister, then the daughter and Jessica sewing it all up, coaxing the confession from the culprit — the jilted ex (of course), before the episode ends with a classic ‘mid-laugh’ freeze. 

And … scene.