Like I wasn’t before. But today I have a whole new appreciation for his accomplishments.

I took some medication yesterday afternoon, which was a big mistake because it’s meant to be taken in the morning. There’s something in it that leaves you wide awake for hours, and it’s best if you’re wide awake when you’re supposed to be. I thought 3pm would be okay, but at midnight I thought: Uh oh. I have to get up at 6 to go running with Rob. So I dug into the medicine cabinet and came up with Valium, which yes, put me straight to sleep. (This is the second Valium I’ve taken in my life. I am not a closeted pill-popping housewife. A closeted bon-bon-eating housewife, perhaps. But not pills.)

I woke up before the alarm this morning, at 5:45. I got up, got dressed, drove to Rob’s house to meet up with him and our other running buds, and went for a run at Stevens Creek County Park. Rob figured it to be about 5 miles, but I think he was off by at least a mile and several hundred feet elevation. This trail kicked my butt. I was the drag on the whole group: during one ascent I finally just started walking and said, “Meet you at the top!”

Drove home. Showered. Dressed. Kissed kids goodbye. Went to go write.

And I’m sitting here unable to form much of a coherent thought besides, “Wow, Mike Oldfield’s soundtrack to The Killing Fields is totally my favorite writing music.”

Hemingway could write with what, a couple fifths of Scotch in him? Damn. One Valium and not enough sleep and I’m down for the count.

I’ve put this under “All About Moi,” but maybe it should really be under “Politics.” One comment I read a million years ago was by a Russian (I think) director who mentioned that American films are extremely political. When called on this statement—don’t we, after all, make mass market apolitical films?—he said, In every film, someone opens one of these giant refrigerators and it’s full of food! That’s an amazingly political statement!

I think about that a lot when I watch movies. Also, when I look at kitchens.

Today I went to the park with the kids, and while they played in the fountain I looked at some of the most dynamic political material I’ve seen in a while.

It’s available at any bookstore or magazine stand. Go ahead, take a peek. It’ll flabbergast you.

These incendiary political tracts go under names like “Better Homes and Gardens Kitchen and Bath.”

Page after page of loving tribute to expensive modifications to already wonderful houses. Kitchens enlarged to encompass 6-burner stoves and double ovens (plus microwave, plus warming drawer), extra beverage refrigerators, prep sinks.

The amazing quantity of raw materials required to create these countertops and built-ins and imported Italian tile backsplashes. And then what’s needed to use the kitchen as intended! The amount of water that flows through the double sink and the two dishwashers and the pot filler connected to the stove… How much gas does a 36,000 BTU stove burn in a minute?

The reason I had the magazine in my hot little hands, of course, is that I want all that stuff. Here, now, on the floor…on the kitchen floor, at least.

We had the floors done this summer: out with the ugly old stained orange carpeting, in with the lovely maple wood. Except we’re not done with the floors yet: they have to be sanded and sealed, and that’s not going to happen until we get the interiors painted. They desperately need painting. Between the overused (and currently to me abhorrent) peach walls and the decorations left by my budding Picassos, they need painting.

And once we got started talking about painting, of course… did we want to change any of the furniture? If we turn the kids’ toy room into a TV room, should we get a new (giant, flat) TV?

In addition to all of this nonsense, the room we spend the most time in save the bedrooms, the kitchen, started crying out for attention. The cabinets are all in this dark-stained oak that we’ve never liked to begin with but now looks terrible next to the maple floors. Do we paint them? Reface them? Replace them? They are kind of old and beaten down— the lazy susan in the corner cabinet doesn’t even turn. And the shelves where the pots and pans are has some kind of dust or something coming in.

The gigantic swath of fluorescent lights on the ceiling that we’ve hated since the day we moved in? Well, one bank of lights gave out entirely, and in the other bank one of the three bulbs gave out. On the electric stove (that we’ve hated, etc.), the biggest burner gave up.

But we can’t just go get a gas cooktop to replace it, even though we’re pretty sure there’s a gas line to the kitchen. The cooktop is in the island. The electric stove has a built-in fan; what would we do about the gas one? Did we want to install a hood over the island in the middle of the room? Or should we, you know…

…remodel entirely? Make the kind of kitchen we’d really, really like?

With the extra sinks and the dedicated baking area and extra ovens (hey, after all, I do cook now, you know!) and…

Just thinking about it makes me breathe a little harder. And the pictures! Oh, the pictures! So fabulously laid out, undoubtedly air-brushed, but just a little (the whole thing couldn’t be fake, could it?)! My kitchen could be one of those glossy, perfect, stainless steel and marble palaces too! A veritable temple to American consumption and use of resources! I could come home to one of those superfabulous testaments to our position in the universe! Yes! Yes! I want mine, dammit!

No idea how we’d pay for a complete kitchen remodel, not to mention the other things we’re thinking about. (Every bathroom needs updating. In some cases…a lot of updating. And in my wilder moments, I wonder what going down to the studs and redoing the floor plan might gain us, because I’m convinced there are better ways of laying out this house.) Maybe after Simon gets out of preschool and we don’t have that monthly expense. Or I make some money. And the stock market doesn’t, you know, crash or anything. Or we could just go wildly into debt and get a home equity loan! It’s the American way! It’s my due, baby!

Wow: those pictures. Woo. Oh yeah. I’ll be back in a minute, I just gotta have a private moment in the bathroom.

I have a lot of bags. I have several rolling briefcases for my powerbook (ain’t toting around no computer with my back, no sirree); I have rolling suitcases; I have a diaper backpack (that’s transitioning to an all-kids-stuff bag); I have a little sport sac type bag that serves as my purse, because it’s easy to carry on its own or stick into aforementioned diaper bag; I have a really nice Coach purse that I bought shortly before having kids and that has more or less sat there forlorn ever since, because I just haven’t had a lifestyle (did I just say that sans irony?) that allows me a big ol’ purse.

And yet: I need another bag.

I realize I need a bag to tote around my stuff that isn’t my powerbook. My drawing equipment (10″ by 7″ watercolor book, paints, water brushes, pens). My Alphasmart Neo, which is a great little device but I haven’t gotten to use it much yet because I never remember to take it with me. (it weighs a pound, my iBook weighs…7 pounds? No contest.) Maybe my Moleskine journal, maybe a paperback.

So, not a huge bag, but one big enough to carry these things around. Stylish is good. Lightweight even better. I have some bags that I’ve used, but they’re cheap and poorly designed to the point where I can’t find anything in them.

Pooks (an admitted bag-aholic*) has already suggested these manufacturers:

• SF Bags
• Crumpler Bags (Caution: world’s most annoying Flash splash page)
• Eagle Creek

Have any recommendations? Cautions? Testimonials?

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* Hey Pooks, I could have used “bag lady.”