The day started off so well — exercise, a green smoothie, and a quick but satisfying pass through the newspapers.    

I could fill in some details, and maybe there was some kind of foreshadowing there.  The exercise, for example, was on a horse, which makes me sound grand.  Except I’m not.  The horse lives at a down market county park and while both he, the horse, and it, the park, are very beautiful, as was the day itself, the experience was not in the least bit fancy.  And the horse was recalcitrant, going wherever he felt like going.  You don’t have to know much about horses to know that the point of riding them is for them to go where you want them to go, not where they want to go.  

The green smoothie is a recent addition to my mornings, most of which, to be honest, I have skipped for the last few months.  The mornings, I mean, not the smoothies.  (But that is a story for another day — or a metaphor for my life right now).  I am very fond of fruit smoothes made with berries and peaches and several juices.  But I make the green ones with baby spinach and kale, and just a bit of fruit, and almond or coconut milk.  They are not as yummy as the ones made with fruit, of course, but they do have a nice crisp taste and the advantage of making one feel incredibly virtuous — all my vegetable servings before noon!  

Monday is a slow news day, so getting through the papers, while satisfying indeed, is not much of an accomplishment. But it did add to the virtuous nature of my morning.  

So vegetabled, caffeinated, and informed, I was ready to tackle my to-do list.  I used to make long to-do lists, on the theory that getting it all out on paper was a good thing.  But then I read that it’s not productive to look at a to-do list that is a full page long as it tends to discourage one from starting any task at all. The thing to do, according to the helpful article, was to make a very short to-do list, three or four items, and get them all checked off, providing one with a satisfying sense of accomplishment.

But the question I faced at the end of the day was this:  how depressing is it to have a to-do list that is only three items long — including “take a shower” — and have accomplished only one thing?  Not including take a shower? 

As I walked down my driveway this afternoon, I just happened to turn around and look up at the sky — for no reason, you understand; there was no noise or sudden movement — and I saw the low winter sun light up the sugar maple across the street like fireworks, and just as swift.  The leaves sparked up yellow as bright as any spring buttercup, and then the gray clouds moved and the leaves were just yellow leaves on a tree with more bare branches than leafed ones.

It was heartbreaking, the way your heart breaks when you spend the day with an dear friend you haven’t seen in a while, and it’s so exciting at first and the words just rush on and on there’s so much to say and catch up on, and then there is that moment after a while when the conversation lags and you’ve said everything you can think of to say and you realize that however much you love your friend, she is not part of your life anymore, at least not the quotidian part, the part about the children and the annoying guy on your daily commute and your new fuschia sweater.  So you struggle on, dredging up dumb and pointless things to talk about, until it’s time to part.  And then you realize that there is still so much important stuff left to say, and that you will leave it unsaid.

It is November, after all.