GREAT WINDOWSILLS I HAVE KNOWN

I really, really love me a good windowsill. Probably because I love staring out windows so much. The view from moving vehicles is by far the best--I'm always desperate for the window seat when booking travel on trains or planes or buses. Back when I lived in Santa Cruz, I used to take the Greyhound up to Mt. Vernon, WA on my way home to visit. It's a good 20-22 hour trip, and I definitely met my share of freaks, recently released felons, and pervy old men with Popov vodka on their breath. But as soon as that big hunk of metal would lumber out of a station and start barreling down the road, between green rice paddies or through endless stretches of nondescript highway nothingness, I'd be in absolute heaven.

Someday, obviously, I will live in a home with enormous windowseats that will allow me to sit, read, ponder life, and take cat naps all while breaking frequently to peer out onto the world in comfort. Dagmar's Pa pretty much had it figured out when he included a huge wrap-around sofa bench all along the windows in the livingroom of the house he built. For Julia and I, our modest sills are only able accommodate plants and candles and various flotsam, below which lurks the requisite ancient radiator--tragically, only wide enough to accommodate approximately 5/8 of the average human posterior.