Sunday Papers

On Sunday mornings both the NY Times and the SF Chronicle are delivered to our door. I can always tell when the Chronicle arrives, by the sullen *thunnngg* of the front gate as that five pound wad of paper is hurled against it. The Times's delivery guy, a much classier fellow, takes the time to drop the paper over the top of the gate, so it arrives silently.

First, of course, one must bring all the paper upstairs and sort out the stuff one doesn't want (advertising supplements, the travel and sports sections, the real estate sections) and make two piles: the Times pile and the Chronicle pile. Then I start with the comics, which still, after two+ years here, has the lure of the exotic. As a New York Girl and a Times reader since childhood, I never got to read the comics as a kid because the Times doesn't have anything so declassé. Zits is my life (today's is particularly apropos). Then I hand the comics over to The Young, and go straight for the Times Magazine. Sometimes everything in it is interesting, from the "Lives" section (which I read first...I am a creature of ritual) to the recipes. Other times there are only one or two things I want to read. But my own personal rule is, no Magazine, no Book Review, no Arts and Leisure, no Week in Review (which I have to prise out of Spouse's hands anyway). When I have used up the Magazine and the other bits of the Times that call to me, I can start in on the Chronicle. But by that time it's likely that Sunday has caught up with me and there are things to do: laundry, shopping, having adventures with the kids, finding that one scrap of sunshine that has somehow outrun the fog and is scheduled to appear for six minutes somewhere near the Bay Bridge. So often I don't get to the Chronicle until Monday, if at all.

Some weeks (she mutters darkly) I don't get to finish the bits of the Times until later in the week. There is nothing so sullen and sure to cause guilt as an unread Book Review on Tuesday morning...