I spent a good half hour this morning teaching AJ how to moonwalk. Being a rambunctious almost three-year-old, he has trouble sitting down long enough to do important things like eat dinner or use the toilet. In the former case, we�ve taken to reading him piles of books while he eats. In the latter, we�ve had to resort to staging a floor show. This morning I�d run out of ideas for stories to tell or songs to sing, so in desperation, I started to tap dance. In clogs. No, I don�t actually know how to tap dance. How hard could it be? Fortunately, AJ found my antics highly amusing, but I kept turning my ankle, so I kicked off my shoes and began to slip and slide around the tile floor. Before long, I found myself doing my best (and worst) Michael Jackson imitation, minus all the child molestation, of course. AJ was floored and was determined to figure out how to do it himself. After I wrestled him back into a pair of pants, we began dance lessons and he kept at it until he was so tired that he had to keep sitting down. An added bonus: the bathroom floor is now extra clean and shiny.

I�ve been feeling like I�m in a real rut and haven�t had much to say lately, and have been interested that so many of the diarists I read regularly have been saying much the same thing. There�s something about March, this limbo time of year where we catapult violently between winter and spring that makes us feel like we�re not accomplishing anything. In terms of the academic year, of course, two thirds of the year is gone already. March reminds us that we are not moving as quickly as we like. The sun comes up earlier, the birds are singing before I wake up. Suddenly, I feel lazy, like I�m wasting my time in bed (never mind that I rarely get more than six and a half hours of sleep). My March dissatisfaction is like the crust of the frozen earth being broken by forceful plants trying to grow and softened by the sun. I need to shed my winter malaise to move on.

I managed to break through yesterday with a banner day of archival research, resulting in hundreds of pages of newspaper articles about a group I�d previously been able to find very little about, as well as several references to groups that weren�t even on my radar screen. I�m fired up again, ready to move, ready to write. I was further rewarded when the sun burst through the dense morning fog, leaving a brilliant, crystal-clear day and the promise of warmth to come.

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