Bowl and audiobooks.

Jeremy got me this green ceramic bowl from Camphill for Mother’s Day, it’s exactly what I wanted and I used it this morning to eat leftover Chinese food from last night’s Sunday night dinner. We had to rearrange the meeting place because at 3 pm on Sunday, Sarah mentioned that 6 of her lacrosse team players had tested positive for Covid (they had all eaten together and hung out on Thursday night) – so in the end, it was just the three of us and Gene and Bette with Chinese takeout from Shanghai Taste (who I think may never reopen their dining room again and just do takeout – I walked in at 4:15 pm on Sunday afternoon and there were literally 20 bags of takeout ready to be picked up). Vince is sick on the west coast, though still testing negative (both on the home rapid test which I hurriedly ordered for him from Amazon and on the school spit PCR test).

I’m reading three books at once which is unheard of for me. I can’t remember the last time I did this, I’m usually a one book at a time person. I’m reading the Ocean Vuong one with Vickey, the Draper – out of my mind one with Sofie and I’m listening to Code Breaker on my phone. I have a hard time with audiobooks, usually preferring podcasts, because my listening skills are not very good and I often lose track of the plot of the book because do daydream in the middle of listening to things. But I read somewhere that you can practice listening and get better at it, so I’m picking non-fiction with a linear plot line and one main character. I first listened to Educated which I’ve tried to read before, but I found too boring to sit through, but fine to listen to and, in the end, was interesting. Code Breaker – about Jennifer Doudna – the Nobel Prize winner for her work with gene editing – has an enormous cast of characters, but I’m semi-familiar with the science and it pulls in lots of interesting things for me – high powered science labs, food scientists (something Vince is interested in), people I know (I took a class from Eric Lander), patent fights and the patent office and medical implications – including maybe editing the Rett gene.