Getting dressed in the morning is easier, as well as faster and a lot more comfortable.
I never, ever have to worry about my nails. Not that I ever did before, come to think about it, but still.
I'm learning my neighborhood by sound, learning to tell the time of day by what is happening across the street, or across my alley, or next door. I am coming to know the rhythms of how the people around me live, and it is influencing how I live, in small ways: it is time to make coffee when the man across the street is finished sweeping the stoop, and lunchtime happens after my neighbor to the right takes out her two dogs. It's time to pick Kiddo up from school when I hear the middle- school kids outside on the sidewalk, and my day is about to end when the man with the tomato- red truck across the alley comes home.
