Zeitgeist

Over the weekend, I read an article in the Times's "Styles" section, written by a woman pondering the meandering course of her rather stultifying, typically upper-middle-class life, which most recently included a divorce. The following caught my eye:

I was 29 then and had spent my 20s reworking my definitions of ambition, fulfillment and potential (and its unpleasant but ever-present twin, unrealized potential), which had produced only a few intermittent teaching jobs, three-quarters of a novel and a reservoir of self-doubt. Those years had offered a crash course in learning that I wasn’t so special. I felt as if at any moment I could drift away, a balloon you have to squint at to see as it disappears.

And then along came marriage, where there was safety in being like everybody else, in having the same wedding with a pretty good band playing “Mustang Sally,” the same dog named after a character from “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the same hopes for home and baby-making.

Hmm. Which character, I thought. "Scout" would seem the most likely candidate, though "Jem," "Dill," or "Boo Radley" would do in a pinch.

Anyway, today's "Home and Garden" section has an article about a picture-perfect, uber-Yupster couple who recently completed a $425,000 renovation ("plus $125,000 for the furniture") on their gigantic, beautiful apartment in the East Village. (Here for the slideshow). They are handsome, 40 years old, and

have two rambunctious boys, Atticus, 7, and Ollie, 5, who treat the apartment like a playground, racing around barefoot after school and leapfrogging from the coffee table to the sofa like small superheroes.

On a recent afternoon, . . . Ollie, who was sitting in a brown leather Arne Jacobsen Egg chair, threw the dice and then jumped up on the table to move his figure while Atticus watched, his arms and chest resting on the table, his legs on the sofa.

Delicious.