In an attempt to come to grips with the new year, she took a detour and read the things she’d written to come to terms with previous years. There turned out to be quite a lot of it – todo lists, wish lists, shopping lists, lists of friends to reconnect with, lists of friends to deconnect with. The latter two overlapped in interesting ways

More interesting, however, was the one word that always recurred. “Later”. There were no end to the things that could and probably should be done, but every year these things somehow delegated themselves into the next one. Perhaps, she thought, there would come a leap year, a year when all the laters would come to pass and save the world from its procrastinating self

The kids had gotten older. What had once impressed them now left them indifferent. What had once made them laugh in amazement was now a mere fact of life. The big, unanswerable questions had transformed into smaller, equally unanswerable questions. Everything changed, and the key to dealing with it was to accept the change at the pace at which it occurred

With this line of thought firmly in mind, he rhetorically asked if anyone wanted pancakes. Not one of the youngsters did. They had outgrown such childish foodstuffs. and wanted more sophisticated grub. These days it was waffles that dominated the menu, and thus he grabbed his spatula and set to work

He looked at the object in amazement

On the one hand, it perfectly encapsulated everything about the organization and its aims. It even captured the emotional resonance that permeated its everyday praxis. It was a remarkable achievement

On the other hand, it was also utterly incomprehensible. All attempts to describe what it resembled resulted in a series of floundering nouns, none of which bore any similarity to each other. A rider on a horse, a spaceship, a parliament in session, a flock of birds, children at play – somehow, all of these incommensurate things at once

In short, it was perfect

She awoke with a very specific task in mind. Not stopping to think or reconsider, she sprung into action and made quick progress. One thing led to another, and soon enough she found herself with a slightly messier than it ought to yet serviceable end result. Having thus exerted herself, she thought back on what had transpired. Waking in the middle of the night to randomly make cupcakes was not, in the strictest sense of the word, normal

In the back of her mind, she suspected the root cause might be the excessively comfortable mittens she’d gotten for Christmas. If this was what finally taught her to bake, tho, she’d take it