I Hereby Adopt a New Mantra

I kind of suck at being able to sit down and read the newspaper. The Sunday editions particularly frighten the bejesus out of me. So many thin pieces, yet so heavy when all pressed together and shoved in a skinny plastic bag!

Nonetheless, I will plunge into that Sunday edition because I so adore the magazine that gets tucked within all those sections of the New York Times. Last night, after putting little Izzie to bed, I tucked myself into their couch alongside the white terrier and dove into the magazine. I immediately got sucked into an article called Cooking with Dexter. It's all about the culinary obsession of 5-year-old Dexter. The author of the piece is Dexter's father and he talks about their joint attempts at new recipes. He goes on to describe his own lack of patience and subsequent tantrums when concoctions turn out less than perfect. His son, he believes, seems to be heading in the same direction...

He has the gene, undoubtedly. He will stop writing a note to a friend and shred it into confetti because a letter E came out backward, and some of his afternoons painting watercolors with our downstairs neighbor have ended in tears, as when the yellow rays of a sunflower were slightly out of proportion to the brown eye in the center. After a similar event in art class last week, he wrote out a note to himself that read: “Step 1: Do your best! Step 2: Try again.”

That last line? Yeah, that's been going through my head all day. It hit me when I ate too much trail mix this morning, when I put off writing that pitch this afternoon, and I'm sure there will be 39 more times it comes to mind in the next day or so. But that's okay. I can always try again.