For the next couple of weeks, Ingrid’s harp is residing in my living room. I keep catching glimpses of it out of the corner of my eye and thinking that it is a person, quietly standing there. It has no malicious intent.

Sunday night I vacuumed my apartment for the first time in many weeks (when you live on the 20th floor most of the dirt from the outside gets knocked off your shoes by the time you get home) and was surprised at how peaceful the place looks when the plush of the carpet is all going the same direction. It’s almost zen-like. I must vacuum more often.

I spent over an hour last night taking pictures of forks in the light of the fluorescent bulb over my sink. They were neatly stacked, artlessly scattered, clustered and laid out in rows. I have far too many forks.

The thyme and oregano growing on my windowsill are leaping, abundant, green and tangled, but the rosemary fell over dead.

Standing in line at the Strand on Saturday afternoon, I glanced down at a book someone had left on the counter, obviously having decided at the last minute that they weren’t interested in it. It was titled, The Way to Write and Publish a Cookbook. It was priced at $1. I am always talking about how I want to write a book about potlucks and I knew instantly that the book was for sitting there for me. I bought it.

There is a line from one of my recent reads, “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert, that I am singularly unable to get out of my head (I’ve written it down on a notecard that sits on my desk to the left of my computer). At the bottom of page 75, she writes, “One must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation.” Every time my eyes glance down at it, my heart rises up, competent and composed, to say, “I’m ready.”