Wasted day

I didn't sleep well last night, although right before I woke up I had a lovely dream in which I had tamed a dragon and was on the verge of getting to fly with it. It was a huge orange-red creature, the color of fire and it was bending its neck down to me. As I reached for it, I felt a little tremor of fear, but the fear was swamped with the overwhelming excitement and joy of getting to fly. To fly! Then I woke up and realized I was over-tired and cranky and not ready for the day in the least. And my eyes were sore, whether from allergies or crying or just being tired I do not know.

Unfortunately, my boy was in much the same state. I found him lying on the floor in the family room, wrapped in his green blanket. He'd been sleepless and gone out there at 2 AM, and he was even more groggy than I was. I took him to school anyway, came home and tried to settle into the workday. Sometimes I need to set myself little goals--twenty emails answered before coffee, one chapter read and then a little outside time with the dog, and I was working in that mode, but not productively. I couldn't get my brain moving. An hour later, the phone rang. I knew before I even picked it up that it was Rory calling from school to come pick him up. I brought him home, settled him in, made him a snack--and suddenly it was noon and I'd gotten nothing done and worse, felt like I wasn't going to. So I took the day as a personal day. And then suddenly it was 5:30. I didn't nap, I didn't think, I didn't write, I did nothing, either productive or unproductive. The day just...disappeared. Well, I read some blogs. Woo-hoo.

I read some of the Palin-Gibson interview and this line struck me as interesting:

Palin: …It kind of cracked me up seeing the list of books that I supposedly banned&one of them was ‘Harry Potter!’ It wasn’t even written or published then.

I did see the list of banned books and quoted it with some doubt in conversation. The list I saw claimed that it was from meeting minutes of the Wasila Library and gave a phone number to call for verification. I wasn't about to call, of course--what a pain for that person to have their number spread on the 'net!--but the thing that struck me as interesting about Palin's statement was her recognition that there was a specific incident pre-1998 that was relevant. Palin was mayor of Wasila until 2002, as I understand it, and Harry Potter certainly was published in that timeframe. So she's conceding that she tried to ban books in 1995? She also claims that it was just a conversation, but the whole idea that the first thing she did as mayor was explore the limits of her power scares me. What would she do as President? What are the limits of presidential power these days, anyway?

Time to go save the cooking parsnips.