10/2 Flew to Sweden overnight. The red-eye mornings into which these flights inevitably turn are so excruciating that I wonder how the flight attendants can handle it day after day. Is it as excruciating for them as it is for me? I can’t imagine any human for whom it is not. Does something else about the job make up for it?

As I go and do grocery shopping with the kids after picking them up – usually the first thing we do – I am surprised by a previously unknown automaticity with which they go to the shelves and get what we need to get; I am mostly just dragging the shopping cart around. My daughter says that she doesn’t like it when we all stand in front of a shelf in a big, undecided huddle, so she just goes ahead and does what needs to be done.