Considering it was the first morning in more than two weeks that Son couldn’t sleep until noon, getting him up and off to high school went very well. In fact, he was dressed, fed, and out the door by 7:30 a.m. Amazing.

Daughter was a little harder to rouse; she had trouble sleeping last night. Clearly, she had a harder re-adjustment to her school night schedule after so many late holiday nights.

Walking Daughter to school this morning in the rain and then walking to my office, I could tell it wasn’t an easy morning for anyone. Damp and dreary, it was a day to stay under the comforter in bed, a day to sip tea and watch "General Hospital" on television.

Or finish Nicole Kraus’ "History of Love" or start "The Story of Pi" which a neighbor left on my door step.

I actually considered staying home. It’s the first time in so long that Husband hasn’t been parked in the living room/office at his computer working on photographs. He’s working in town now. Manhattan. What a change for all of us.

2006 is off to a nice start. I am superstitious about the early days of January. Last year, I had a terrible earache and laryngitis and my kids were sick. I thought maybe it didn’t bode well for the new year but 2005 was a good year for all of us.

In January 2001, I had a premonition in the first week of January that it was going to be a terrible year and it was, for the most part, a terrible year – personally, for the city, for the country, for the world.

But 2006 is off to a fairly uneventful start which is a good thing. And there was something so special about this holiday week: I think it had something to do with those Mondays. Little gift days. Unexpected, quiet, no banks, no mail. Some people went to work but we didn’t. I think the Mondays were nicest of all.

I meditated this morning to the sound of a wilderness river. There were songbirds, small rapids and crickets intermingled with telephone rings, office chairs on wood floors, and the voices of from the other offices on this hallway.  It put me in a good mood: sitting by the river, in my office, at the start of the year.

Breathe in, Breathe out. Take it slow. Happy New Year.