The Joy of Books

After reading a recent post by AC, I started thinking about a couple of other things, and this post came from it. I'm not blog-plagiarizing, I swear....

I have a friend who is the single father of a precious little three-year-old boy who's just learning to read. This dear sweet man is having the joy of watching the little one discover Dr. Seuss; their current favorite is There's a Wocket in My Pocket, a venerable classic I remember enjoying as a child. Every time I listen to my friend talking about his little boy and their reading adventures, I have to smile both at the pride and wonder in his voice and at my own memories of reading as a child.

So much of who I am now comes from being read to as a child. The love I have of books was given to me by my parents and my grandparents. Every night, my father would read me a story. I have no idea how many times he read me The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (also Dr. Seuss), O See Can You Say, or the story of Joseph from my children's picture Bible, but he never complained. He always tucked me in, sat beside me or in the rocking chair, and read me whatever I brought him.

I always had books. My parents took me to the library during the summers, and I ripped through large stacks of them. I also don't ever remember going into our town's one tiny bookstore and ever coming out without at least one book in hand. I might not have gotten a toy every trip into town, but they never told me no about books. The things that were important were afforded.

I am the person I am today because of that philosophy. My love of language, of literature, of knowledge is a direct product of those bedtime stories, those summer expeditions to the public library, those indulgences in the bookstore. I just can't be grateful enough. I hope my friend will keep reveling in his little one's newfound reading. I hope someday I'll have little ones of my own whom I can read to, buy books for, and take to the library to get their library cards.

Easter Dinner

Mom, Dad, and I had an Easter Picnic at the Red Field today. It was a little too chilly to stay as long as we had planned, but it was really nice. We reclaimed one of the huge old cable spools my grandmother had long ago converted into a table, and, with the addition of some plastic lawn chairs, we had a dining set. I fried chicken in one of my heritage cast iron skillets and took it, and Mom made the rest of the meal: macaroni salad, baked beans, a salad tray with deviled eggs and veggies, and cornmeal muffins. I took one of my vintage 1940's cotton print luncheonette cloths to cover the table, and it was great. We had pecan pie for desert.

It wasn't a baked ham, fresh flowers, and bone china, but then again, we're not really that type of family. We can do that, and we have the stuff for it, but somehow, paper plates and the wide, hand-planed oak boards of the Red Field porch seemed to fit us better today. After we ate, we watched Mom and Dad's dog race around the field chasing birds, we talked, and we read until the wind just got too cold to bear. We left with a since of having made a good family memory.

The whole time we were there, I kept thinking about my grandmother. She would have loved it. Our eating there reminds me so much of summer meals when we used to have hay hauling dinners out in the pasture with big boilers of baked beans, huge baking dishes of macaroni and cheese, and sandwiches for the hay hands. I am looking forward to a long summer of picnicking up there and making new memories. If my friends can overlook the absence of indoor plumbing (it is a hayfield, after all), I want to share it with them, too. It's just a wonderful place.

Stupid Wednesdays

I hate Wednesdays. They are always rushed, off-kilter, and absurd. This past week was no exception. It started with a torrential downpour just as I was starting to leave and my big umbrella out in the car, safely furled and totally useless on the back seat. It was also garbage day, so I dashed out with the garbage bag and an old "emergency" umbrella I dug up that had been patched with duct tape, loaded up the car, and tried to start my day.

When I got to the bottom of the hill, I quickly got out of the car, pulled the trash off the roof of the PT Cruiser, and shut the car door to keep the rain out while I put the trash bag out for collection. When I came back to the car and pulled on the handle, the car was locked up tight, lights on, engine running, windshield wipers complacently sweeping back and forth in the heavy rain. I won't go into what I said at that point, but let's just say it wasn't very grammatically correct nor was it very elevated language.

Since daylight saving time has kicked in, I had to hike back up my driveway in the dark to retrieve a spare key from the house. Fortunately, I had a spare house key if not a spare car key, but by the time I could get back up to the house for the key and back down to the car with it, I was completely soaked since the patched umbrella had only shielded my upper body from the rain. I drove the car back up the hill shaking and dripping.

I ran in, frantically dug through my closet for something dry that would match the top I had on, and wound up with a pair of black pants that are about a size and a half too big. Since I was running very late, I didn't have time to be creative, so I just toweled off and dove into them, praying they wouldn't fall off me at some crucial point during the day. I got in the car, found that the car seat was still wet and needed to have been dried first, and finally headed off to school.

I won't go into the rest of the day, but it pretty much went like that, only I was inside and didn't get rained on for the rest of it. As I said before, Wednesdays really ought to be illegal.

Like There Never Was a Holiday At All

Tomorrow, I'm officially supposed to be in three places at the same time, 2:45. Apparently, that is the magic hour for Wednesday afternoon academic meetings. Not 2:30. Not 2:00. Two freaking forty-five. Emails kept coming in today telling me that one committee after another in the never-ending assortment I'm a part of was going to meet, and I kept thinking, "Well, isn't tomorrow going to be grand?"

I've done practically nothing but grade since Sunday afternoon, and I feel like my eyes are burning. I've completed two sets of essays, a set of largely essay tests, and half another set. I have two more sets of essay tests and two full sets of essays still waiting along with several lesser types of grading that just came in over the last two days, and every time I look at the pile of papers on top of my filing cabinet, I just want to run away. I think longingly of the Red Field and my Adirondack, sigh, pull another red pen out of the drawer, and push on. Sometimes it feels like I never even had a Spring Break at all. At least this is a short week....

Big Ten Loss

Being a Hoosier alumnus, I am a bit rabid about basketball. Thanks to the wonders of DirecTV, I get the Big Ten Network, one of those things that ranks up there with sliced bread for me during basketball season. I don't really care about any other team very much. I'll back Duke if IU is out and support them moderately, but put me in front of a Hoosier basketball game and you'll see a very loud person come flailing out.

Tonight was no different. The game against Minnesota was a heart-breaker on many levels. This season has been hard, and tonight more than any other game I've watched them play, they just looked like they were out of steam. Nevertheless, I whooped and hollered from my courtside couch right up until that lucky kid from Minnesota tossed that buzzer beater in. I just knew that they were going to win it.

We're headed to the NCAA tourney anyway, and maybe this way the team will have a chance to rest up some and get their heads together a little. I sure hope so, anyway. I am looking forward to more IU wins. I figure the Illini will take care of those yellow rodents tomorrow night, anyway.

Wondering Who

This is mostly an exercise in clearing my mind of the cobwebs that develop. If you go right back to the first posts that I wrote, you can tell that. However, I've been aware of a subtle shift as these three years of my blogging have elapsed, a shift toward a conversational style. I don't think it's possible to write a blog in a vacuum, to be unaware of the fact that it is sitting out there like a book left open on the kitchen counter, waiting for somebody to come by and read a page or two.

I can't imagine who might be interested in thumbing through the pages, to tell you the truth. I know I have some family and friends who read this as sort of a newsletter to find out what absurdities I'm up to in the long intervals between our face-to-face or voice-to-voice contacts, and I have a couple of blog friends that I've made, but other than that, I wonder.... I certainly don't have a rock-star life, no high drama, no romance to speak of, just little fragments of the daily life, like pieces of sea glass worn smooth along their edges by the constant friction along the water's edge. Well, whoever you are and for whatever reasons you come here, I hope there's some satisfaction for you.

Reading Day

Today, I didn't go to the Red Field. I stayed home and read instead. I got my lawn chair cushion from its cat-proof storage spot next to my washing machine and sat in the glorious sunny beauty of my yard with a pile of books. There were certainly other things I should have been doing, but I resolutely ignored them all.

I finished up the Bill Bryson biography of Shakespeare. It was really good. I like Bryson anyway; his A Walk in the Woods is still one of the funniest books I've ever read, and even though I am not a big camper/hiker, it always makes me want to go try the Appalachian Trail. This bio of Shakespeare was good because it was clean. He stuck to the facts, more or less, and presented anything that couldn't be backed up with a document as an opinion. I learned a lot, including some really bizarre stuff.

I also woke up to the sound of Roux and Yelldo exuberantly chasing the UPS truck down the driveway this morning, so I knew that my Spring Break treat, some chick lit, had also arrived. I just got through with it. I probably should have doled it out over the next few days, but I did it cover-to-cover today after lunch and Shakespeare. Sort of a nice symmetry to the day, no? Shakespeare in the morning, chick-lit in the afternoon....

Also in with the chick lit was another of the Everyman Pocket Library collections of poetry, this time under the topic heading of Solitude. It has a much different feel to it that did the Love Poems collection, but it's equally as good. It's not quite what I expected, as Solitude and Loneliness seem to be interchangeable for the editors of the collection (I don't really see them as the same thing), but I have put several little flags in the collection all the same. I like these thematic collections. It's a nice way to see a broad spectrum of writers from different time periods and schools viewing different things.

Well, I think I'm just about worn out with reading. I do have one other book about halfway done, and there's a book I need to read for my classes, so I might read some more tomorrow, but I think I want to vegetate in front of the TV now. Ah the luxury of Spring Break, when all sorts of indulgences are possible!

Another Good Day in the Country

I spent the majority of the day back at the Red Field. I read most of a biography about Shakespeare by Bill Bryson, hiked around some more, and generally enjoyed not having any other responsibilities. When school starts back and I'm no longer able to pack my bag and hike out to my refuge every day, I don't know what I'm going to do.

While I was out for one of my walks, I took some time to hike near the creek that runs through part of the property. I fought my way through some of the Katrina-downed trees to get over to a particularly pretty bend of it, and as I was looking down at the water and rocks, I became aware of the HUGE freakin' water moccasin sunning itself on one of the dry stones in the stream about the same time he became aware of me. I'm not quite sure which one of us was more appalled or which of us moved sideways faster. Despite the fact that I was about five feet above him on the bank, I still decided that discretion was the better part of valor, especially since I didn't have snake leggings, a bill hook, or a gun, and I got away from the creek. He was a very healthy specimen, probably about five feet long. I completely understand Emily Dickinson's quote about feeling a "zero at the bone." I have a "live and let live" philosophy with almost all God's creatures, including rattlesnakes, but cottonmouths and copperheads don't make that list.

Despite close encounters with the reptilian kind, the rest of my trek was nothing less than peaceful. I startled two beautiful deer out of a pine thicket where they were grazing. I don't think they were all that afraid, actually, but they were lovely to watch in motion sliding through the pine shadows. All the little blooming trees are budding. In a week or two, the woods should be veiled in green mist. It will be even more beautiful then and even harder to leave at the end of the day.

I have that quiet, calm feeling of being agreeably exercised and appropriately sunned. I will probably go back again tomorrow, even though there are other things that I need to be doing as I approach the end of my week. I think I'll take a bill hook, though, and maybe some stouter boots....

Birds

The yard to the south of my house is pretty much dedicated to the birds. It didn't start out that way. I think I brought one bird feeder home from Indiana with me, and I hung it in a tree. It got mobbed, and that response and the beauty of all the little feathery gems pleased me, so I bought another one. Any of you who feed birds know how this story goes....

Currently, I go through about forty pounds of seed a week, and that's just because I'm adamant about only filling the feeders once a week and making the little jewel-tone slobs clean up after themselves before I put any more out. I have suet-baskets and bird baths. At last count I was up to six feeders, only one of which is "squirrel proof" (yes, they too, love the big buffet).

I love to watch them from my various windows and doors. I have some really bright and exotic ones, bluebirds, cardinals, goldfinches, and the occasional oriole, but I enjoy the wrens, sparrows, and chickadees just as much. They aren't as flashy, but their songs are sweet, and just watching them and hearing the flutter of their wings when the windows are open is a peaceful thing.

In a way, I like the simple birds more sometimes. I am a simple, plain bird myself, after all, and maybe I feel a kinship with them. They are not gleaming blue or red, but there is a loveliness in their brown shadings. After all, the winter wren was the King of Birds for the Druids. God tells us, too, that he takes care of these little birds just like he takes care of me. One of my favorite hymns has always been, "His Eye Is on the Sparrow."

I have a statue of St. Francis that I bought at a place locally that has a menagerie of concrete yard art. He has a bird in his cupped hand. I'm not Catholic, but I've always admired St. Francis. I have a copy of one of his prayers up in my classroom, and I respect him as the patron protector of animals, as well. I put the statue at the entrance to that part of the yard. I thought it was appropriate. We're all getting something in the south yard, the birds and I, a little bit of seed or suet, a little bit of refreshment of some kind. I don't think St. Francis would disapprove.

Quotes on Thinking

The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.
- CS Lewis
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Red Field

I spent today at the Red Field, a pasture my family owns where we've built a structure from wood from an old barn. There is no sound there but the sound of wind through the trees. It was perfectly peaceful. I opened all the windows and doors of the building and sat in my chair on the porch reading for hours. I hiked around in the woods when I felt like it, down to the creek that runs through the property and around through various paths that animals or generations of people have cleared. I took a bottle of bubbles and enjoyed the simple childhood pleasure of blowing soap bubbles and watching them dance in the breeze. Sometimes solitude can be oppressive, but sometimes it can be a healing balm. Today, it was exactly what I needed. I may go back tomorrow, too. It's nice to be in a place where I know all the complicated and ridiculous nonsense of the day-to-day world can't find me.

Complications

I like things very streamlined. Maybe it's the Aquarius in me. I have a very logical and structured life, and I can turn most things over in my mind until I understand them, until I can separate them into their component pieces, digest them and break them down. Things that don't follow that pattern, that don't allow me to resolve them in this way, frustrate me to no end.

Yesterday, I found a wrinkle in the fabric of my tidy little life. Someone I thought I knew, I found I may not know at all. I suppose this happens all the time. I could wax philosophical, I guess. "Do we ever really know anyone? Blah, blah, blah..." The thing is, I really did think that I did know this person, at least somewhat. I'm not claiming a soul-deep bond, but I felt that I had a basic understanding of a personality, of the core values and appreciations, I guess. All of that was jerked out from under me yesterday like a tablecloth from under a place setting by an amateur magician. You've all seen the results of that. Broken china everywhere....

My mind has been grinding on this since it happened, turning the shards over again and again, but I can't resolve the issue. I thought this person and I had so much in common. Do we? I can't tell anymore. What's the truth? Is the person I knew before the real one? Was yesterday a misreading? If the image I saw yesterday was the true one, then I have been so wrong about so much. I'm simply going to have to pick up those broken pieces and make a decision, I guess, about whether the relationship in question is still worth gluing together and putting back on a shelf or whether it's time to put all those pieces in the trash for good. I'm confused, and there's really nothing I hate more.

Robert Graves' "The Portrait"

I added this poem to my blog as a permanent addition today just under my "About Me" section. When I read it, it struck me as though it were written about me. At least, I wish some man had written it about me; I feel this way so often. I feel like I stick out by not sticking out, if that makes any sense. I know for a fact I'm looking for the man who is different, too. I don't know if he's out there. I keep hoping, sort of in fits and starts, that he is.

Poetry Collections

I just ordered two books of poetry from amazon.com, and I have to say that they were money well-spent. The first one was a Penguin collection of 500 years of the sonnet, and just going through it makes me wish I could write them better. I've never had the discipline to try my hand at them. Just thinking of trying to write in iambic pentameter makes my head hurt. I love to read them, though. Well-written ones are that much more lovely to me because of the extra rigor involved in keeping the form. Claude McKay's sonnets amaze me. A collection of his stuff is next on my "to buy list."

The other book of poetry I bought was, and don't laugh, an Everyman Library Pocket Book of Love Poems. The Hopeless Romantic (not Hopeful, that's my friend) just couldn't resist it when it came up as a "Customers who bought this book also liked...." as I was putting the sonnet collection into my cart. It's fabulous. I spent time I should have been sleeping last night going through it and marking poems that moved me. About half the book has little post-it flags on it now. All I need now is somebody who enjoys them to talk to about them. HA!!!!!! Yeah, they're lining up around the corner for THAT...more like fleeing at top speed.

In all seriousness, it's one of the nicest collections of love poems I've seen. Some of the expected ones are there, Shakespeare's Sonnet 116, "She Walks in Beauty like the Night", and so forth, but there are also translations of things I've never heard of from ancient texts and other languages that are powerful. Combined with incipient Spring, they have my stupid, sappy heart sighing. Ah well, at least I can enjoy the poems....

BLEAARRGHHH!!!

That's the noise I make right before my head explodes....

Tonight I stayed after my night class to talk with my professor about my upcoming paper. I needed to run my topic by him to get the imperial thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Yes, it's something I should have done long ago, I admit. Sue me. I'm am frantically treading water right now just to stay afloat.

Along with the royal nod of permission to pursue my humble little paper topic, I also got The Lecture about how I Should Have Started This Paper When the Semester Began. I just wanted to throw my Riverside at him and run away. Perhaps he's right. Certainly, it's a huge paper. Definitely, I will have to burn the midnight oil to get it done. However, I am wearing so many hats and doing so many things right now, that I'm sorry, but that paper isn't even on my horizon yet.

I am proud, though. I managed still and smiling pique. All I said was, "Don't worry. I'll get to it. I promise," and I gracefully swept off to my car.

Geez, I'm tired....

Longing for Balance

When I'm tired like this, what I want more than anything is someone to lean on. It's hard to have to be strong all the time. I do it. Everybody does. It's what life is made of. You get up in the morning, and no matter how hard it is, you do what you have to do. I just wish, though, that there was someone to help me hold it all up. I feel like a caryatid who is unable to support the architecture. I need the telamon that is made to balance on the other side of the door frame. Surely even a woman of stone wasn't intended to bear that weight alone. I don't want to be cosseted and petted. I don't want to be sheltered. I just need my mate to help me keep it all in balance.

New Style

I succumbed to the temptation to add a template to my blog. I hope I haven't gaudied it up too much. I just wanted some color. Of course, that means my hit counter at the bottom has completely reset, and also that I had to totally redo all my little widgets, but overall, I like the bit of color. Maybe it's not too tacky. It's amazing how long it took me to pick this one. Of course, nobody but me even cares what it looks like, and you, gentle reader, will simply glance, nod, and go on about your merry business. For me, though, it was a bit like picking out wallpaper or paint for the living room....what will company think? You know all the time that no one will say a word unless you've chosen some horrible shade, but still....

Man, I need to go to bed....

One Week Left

...until Spring Break. I can't wait. Not that I have profound or exciting plans, mind you. It's just that I can't wait to sleep late and do nothing. I plan to take a bottle of bubbles and some good books up to the Red Field pasture watch clouds for at least half the week.

I feel good, generally speaking, about life, no dark clouds overhead, but I'm bone weary. I have a lot of work to do before this week is over by way of grading and so forth, so I'm sure by the time I actually make it to Friday, I'll be even more tired.

I ordered two new collections of poetry for a payday treat that I'm excited to get, though, so I'll have those to look forward to when they come in, and I've got a pile of stuff on the shelf to keep me busy.

The only potential dark spot on Spring Break is a party that I've been asked to. I want to go; the party itself is not the problem. The problem is that I suspect there's a fix-up lurking just under the surface. I'm hopeless with men, and to be sort of thrown at one I don't know in a social setting is a little like my idea of hell. I am usually very quiet around people I don't know well, anyway, and just let me have the first hint of "this is supposed to be a fix-up" and I will automatically become the most gauche, mute, and pitiable person within four counties. This is just one of the many, many reasons I am still single.

This poor, unsuspecting soul probably has no idea that my dear, sweet friend is about to foist me, the Amazon queen, off on him, either, and I think that's not a good thing to do to someone without some preparation. I am almost positive that I require advanced preparation. Maybe I should type up a card or brochure or something. Let's see how would that go? "So you want to date an English teacher! Tips and strategies for survival." Maybe a nice 1950's image on the front.....(Ha!)

The whole thing makes me queasy. Why does it have to work this way? Why couldn't I just be friends with somebody, and then, bang, suddenly the two of us figure out that we were crazy about each other? It would be so much easier that way. I could be myself that way. That's the way I have always dreamed that it would work.

Whenever I have to think about "dating", I'm never myself. Maybe that's a good thing, but realistically, at some point, all the various shades of me are going to come out, and whatever particular variety you may think you know may not be the whole picture. A friend would know that because I don't have to reign in the me who likes stuff like old disco, Johnny Cash, or the Rolling Stones played really, really loudly while I drive. With somebody I don't know well, and basically, anybody that I'm "dating" is going to fall into that category for a long time, I'm not going to feel comfortable with any choice I make. It's excruciating.

Well, all this is just a tempest in a teapot. I'll go to the party. Maybe I'm wrong about the fix-up. If not, I just won't let it turn into a big deal. Maybe the guy will be a wonderful person. I need to meet some nice guys, God knows. I just keep thinking back to some of my last ventures in dating and what those were like, and I can't help but shudder....

Hmmm.....

The deep joy we take in the company of people with whom we have just recently fallen in love is undisguisable. ~John Cheever

The Urge to Do Stupid Things

This hits me several times a year, usually when I'm tired and my responsibilities are piling up. The urge to do stupid things takes several forms. Sometimes, it takes the "Throw all my crap in a big box and go overseas" form. This one is mighty hard to resist, especially when I get emails from my friends who happen to be overseas and hear tales of their interesting lives. They make my passport itch.

Other times, the urge to do stupid things takes the form of getting a tattoo. I've secretly and not-so-secretly wanted one for years, but I'm too afraid of needles to get one. Since I can barely sit long enough for a phlebotomist to pull several vials of blood for testing, I don't think I could endure thousands of sticks needed to make a permanent design, no matter how much I want one.

Another form of the urge to do stupid things involves giving up my teaching job to pursue a higher degree. What the heck would I do with a higher degree? I don't really want it. It would just be a form of glorified avoidance. I miss being a full-time student sometimes, especially on the days when I manage to erase the parts of my brain that stridently recall just how often big parts of that lifestyle sucked.

There are other forms, all of them some kind of escapism, some of them mild, some of them serious. I drive to school and imagine not taking the right off-ramp but rather flooring it and winding up on the east coast somewhere. Coming home, I see the sign for New Orleans, and I think, "Hmm...." Driving past the shiny, enticingly-curved Chargers on the lot at the local Dodge dealership, I grip the steering wheel and wonder if my budget would stretch to cover the monthly budget if I just whipped in there.

I think, though, that I'm just going to pursue a lesser escape tonight, the refuge of sleep. Maybe that's what's wrong with me. If not, it's Spring Fever, and Katie bar the door, because I'm not sure what will resolve it....

Tragedy

Yesterday during the chaos between second and third periods, one of my colleagues asked me if I taught a certain student. I said yes, he'd been one of mine last year. The colleague went on to tell me that that student had committed suicide the night before.

Nothing in any education class prepares you for news like this. There is no training anywhere adequate for words like that. I felt like someone had punched me, and I started to cry. I can still see him, even right at this very moment. He was a tall, tall guy. He played basketball for us, and he was quiet, but so sweet. He had a mischievous grin and a clever sense of humor.

He struggled academically, but together, we worked hard and got him through the course and to graduation. I hadn't heard from him since he left our school, but that's the case with about 98 percent of my graduates. Unless I see them out in the community or hear from a younger sibling who happens to pass through my room at some point, I don't usually know much about them once they leave.

I went back into my room, and I tried to get on with class, but I knew my students would know more details, and I had to ask. They told me more about it. He'd broken up with a longtime girlfriend, he'd been living with his sister, he'd lost his beloved grandmother and never gotten over it, and ultimately, he'd felt there was nothing left for him. That sweet, funny, gentle kid felt that life was over for him before he turned 20. I sat at my desk, in front of my students, something you're probably never supposed to do, and cried. I couldn't stop.

I went and got a teacher from across the hall who was on his planning period to keep them for a few minutes and pulled myself back together as best I could, but the rest of the day was very hard for me. I was teaching Ophelia's death in AP, and just talking about suicide was almost more than I could bear. I kept wanting to stop class and just say to all of them, "If you ever reach the point where you think you don't matter to anyone else in this world, know that I will cry for you. Come see me. You may not think anybody else cares, but I do. I will listen to anything you have to say, just don't decide to end your life."

As I was getting my hair cut yesterday evening, I told my beautician, "I love what I do, but some days, I really hate this job. Today, I think I would be happier flipping burgers." At that moment, I meant it. One of the beautiful parts of teaching is getting to know all these wonderful kids, even for the brief time that we get to be a part of their lives. It's one of the things I like better about K-12 than about college. In college, it's very hard to make contact with your students; it's impersonal. In K-12, the structure of teaching is about building relationships. Unfortunately, those relationships also come with pain sometimes when loss occurs.

All day long, I kept staring at the desk where he sat last year. Oddly enough, nobody sits in that desk in any class I have this year. It's an empty desk this year. For me, that emptiness became acutely poignant yesterday. In the silences of my off periods, I could almost see him sitting there again, long basketball player legs sticking out into the aisles again, and I so wished that he'd found somebody somewhere who could have met his need.

Happy-ness

I feel like I'm tempting fate to write about this. I feel like I'm just asking the hammer of the gods to come down and smack me. However, if I whine...er...write about all the crap, then I ought to crow about the good, too.

Today, I continued to feel wonderful. Maybe it's a belated birthday gift. No existential angst. No secret yearnings. In fact, the situation I'd written about previously is totally, suddenly, and inexplicably gone. God has totally healed my heart. It's amazing, it's wonderful, and I can hardly understand it. I never thought I'd be so happy to say that I wasn't interested in somebody anymore, but I really, really am. I can enjoy that friendship now as just that. I want to dance, sing, and shout with relief. God is good.

I haven't been this content and peaceful in my own skin since right before I left Indiana. It's even okay that I'm still alone. Can you believe this is me writing this? Maybe thirty-two is the age when the brain finally decides to quit grieving over impossibilities and get on with the living. Maybe there's a train oncoming waiting to smack into me tomorrow. I don't know, but I've sure enjoyed the past couple of days.

I'm writing poetry again, too. I've produced two poems in the last week, and that's more than I have written in the six months previous. Granted, one of them is NOT good, and probably belongs in the bottom of the waste bin rather than in my works-in-progress notebook, but just to feel the muse stirring again is, not to be melodramatic or anything, thrilling.

I feel like a lamp that was clogged with soot. Maybe that's what the past couple of years were for me, sooty years. Something lately burned that soot clear, and now I feel like I'm me again, like I am burning with a bright clear flame again. My Chinese zodiac sign is that of the Fire Dragon. Maybe the dragon is just finally starting to wake up. It's about time, don't you think? I hope I can hold on this.

A Sudden Surge of Clarity

I don't know if it's the phase of the moon or what, but I've had so much energy the past two days. I built a stained glass window Saturday, I've done a lot of housework, and today, I graded a bunch of papers, made dinner and rice pudding for dessert, and I just generally feel bouncy. The angst that I've been so wrapped up in has evaporated like mist. At least for today, I'm content with my life, small and fragile thing that it is. It's a good feeling.

Old Movies

What is it that makes old movies so good? I just finished watching The African Queen, and I don't see how you could ask for a better film. So many of my favorite movies are older than me. In fact, most of my favorite films are almost twice as old as me. There's Some Like It Hot, All About Eve, Casablanca, Singing in the Rain, Sunset Boulevard, and The Women. There's It Happened One Night and the peerless 1929 version of The Phantom of the Opera. They all shine like pearls on black velvet, lustrous and sheened with traces of color even though most of these are actually black and white films. The list could go on and on...Gone with the Wind, Double Indemnity, Gaslight, and The Philadelphia Story...each film something to savor slowly and with great relish. My students often ask me if I've seen the latest box office smash, and I almost always have to tell them no. Who has time for the ephemeral when all these eternal greats are to be had?

Bothered and Bewildered

I've met somebody at long last who interests me. He and I share so much. Every time I talk to him, I find another thing to marvel over. He's smart and enjoys knowing and learning. He actually reads, and more than that, he likes poetry. To be perfectly honest, most men I know who can talk to me about books or poetry are either my married and ancient literature professors or "playing for the other team." He's been places. He's seen other things. He's brave, he's honest, he's open about things, and he's passionate about what he cares for. He's the kind of man that I thought didn't exist anymore.

Of course, he is also my good friend, and he is no more attracted to me than one of those professors who "play for the other team" would be. I'm glad he's my friend. I'm glad to know that there is a man like him somewhere in the world. While I think it's doubtful, maybe if there's one, somewhere there's another. While I wish he'd look at me and see me as more than just a friend, I'm used to men not seeing more than that. I guess I should just look at as a good thing that finally my heart has been moved again.

Teaching Quote

When one teaches, two learn.
Robert Half

My Birthday

The day I had been dreading so deeply turned out to be one of the best birthdays I've had. It's funny how things turn out that way sometimes.

My second period class rigged a scam involving my being called to the office for an "emergency", decorations, flowers, and cake. They gave me a card, and one of my students who has just returned from a trip to India gave me a small model of the Taj Mahal, a place I have always wanted to see. I almost cried.

Fourth period was disgruntled because second period stole their idea of an office emergency, but they, too came armed with cake and gifts. They gave me a gift certificate to a local bookstore and a very sweet card.

At lunch, my dear sweet friend brought me another cake and the group I eat lunch with gave me a card they'd made and signed, and my sugar trifecta was complete.

That night I went to dinner at my favorite Mexican restaurant with my Mom and Dad, something we almost never do anymore, and afterwards, I went to a concert. Bela Fleck and Chick Corea did a show at our local renovated theater, and they were amazing. I cut my night class to go, and it was the best decision I've made in a long time.

All in all, it was a splendid day. I really needed it, too. It helped me get through the day that followed with a smile on my face, and that's no mean feat.

Too Much

In two days, I will be thirty-two. The countdown is almost done. Today was horrid for reasons I won't go into here. What I thought I was over, or at least had locked up in a dark corner of my mind and thrown away the key, reemerged today, and now I feel awful again. I wish I could just fast-forward this week right through to Friday. I don't know how I'm going to get through the birthday and Valentine's, especially since one of my friends now has a brand-spanking new love that he's all aglow with. I'm thrilled for him because God knows he deserves it. He's a good man, one of the few I know. However, for me, it's salt in raw wounds. Maybe some of his happiness will rub off on me. I hate to forever be the dark cloud, but this birthday is just kicking my butt this year. At least it will be over soon. Maybe I can find some peace with it once it's done and get back to something besides whining and griping. I hate doing it, but I can't seem to stop, either. It's all too much. Maybe I just need to go out and do something really stupid.

End of a Long Week

I'm dragging. Fridays, which I'm sure used to be a day of going and doing something fun at night, have turned into an evening of coming home and crashing on my couch. Two nights a week of night classes are killing me. I like the classes, but I just can't seem to recover from them like I used to.

I have no big plans for this weekend. I have the obligatory housework and errands to take care of, but other than that, I plan to keep things low-key.

I wish I had some more time this weekend to go somewhere with my friends or have a big get-together in honor of the impending Day of Doom coming up Wednesday. I had planned to do that, but somehow, I just never got myself together to do it. Since some of the people I want to come are not local, it takes a bit of finessing.

Well, I think I'm going to go curl up with a book for awhile. I have some assigned reading I should be doing for my charming professor, but I'm going to rebel and skip it for a bit.

Literary Life Philosophy

Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow.
Lawrence Clark Powell

Stand (Mixer) ing Up for Myself

I finally did it. The last piece of the bridal registry that I had so long held out for, the last big box that I had one day hoped to rip white and silver paper off at a church shower is now sitting in my kitchen waiting to be opened up, unpacked, and plugged in. I have an Empire Red KitchenAid Artisan mixer waiting to make sour cream pound cakes, whipped potatoes, and whatever other damn thing my little heart desires. Complicated cakes and breads? That's what it's made for. Jell-O instant pudding at midnight? The glossy beast will serve. Water swirling in pretty whirlpools just to see the gleaming beaters spiral? Too right, missy. I feel a little bit of the same sort of power madness that a Charger instills in me, and this thing doesn't even have a Hemi.

I've waited years for this. I've watched my friends one by one, get one, either with husband or after husband, and I've drooled over them (the mixers, not the husbands) in the stores but never been willing or able to fork over the hunk of money required to bring one home (again, the mixer, not the husband). As the big 3-2 approaches, though, I am laying aside the last of the bridal dreams. If I don't stand (mixer) up for myself now, I may spend the rest of my life with my nose pressed up against the store window when I could be at home making pound cakes. Today, I officially chose pound cakes.

Tomorrow, I will hie myself off to a grocery store to buy the strictly non-diet-friendly ingredients I need for the sour cream pound cake I love but haven't made in over a year. I will take out the beautiful Bundt pans my parents have bought me for birthdays over the years, including the one shaped like a rose, the mini-bundts, and the one with the spiky, star-like top, and I am going to bake like a crazy woman. It's going to be a lot of fun. I'll take the results, good, bad, or indifferent to school Wednesday so my house doesn't fill up with edible temptation. Man, this is going to be fun.

Topamax -- For All You Searchers

I've noticed there have been a lot of hits on my blogs about Topamax, and I've pretty much stopped writing about my experiences with it. I sort of left that story unfinished, and those of you who have started taking it and are looking for some sort of "ending" may be wondering if it ever got any better for me. The simple answer is yes.

I've been on Topamax since October, and although the period of adjustment getting up to the full dosage was just miserable, now that I'm there, most of the worst of the side effects for me are gone. I still have moments of tingling in my fingers and toes, but those are fairly rare for me. I have lingering moments of processing lag, but the huge lags I reported earlier, especially those when trying to play the piano and organ, have either smoothed themselves out or my brain has learned to compensate.

I do still lose words and spellings of words. Names are the worst. That tip-of-the-tongue syndrome happens to me all the time. Sometimes I can get to the information I need in a few minutes, sometimes not. I just tell my students I'm having a Topamax moment, and we go on. It is embarrassing at times, especially when it's a person's name that's lost.

Topamax ultimately helped me to lose about 40 pounds, along with diet changes. As that's something I needed to do, I was grateful to it. The weight is still coming off, but not as rapidly as before.

I have not had a full-on migraine since the middle of December. I was having them every time I got stressed out about something, meaning that when school was in session, I was needing my Maxalt about once a week. To me, that's pretty impressive. It's too soon to tell if this record will hold, but I've already passed through some pretty stressful stuff (see earlier blogs from this week if you don't believe me), and no hammer of the gods, so I think the Topamax has to be doing something right.

Ultimately, the only thing I can tell you about the drug is this: so far, it's been good to me. My side effects were nasty at first, but I didn't have the worst of the range, either. I have a good friend who had to get off of it because her side effects included some of the intolerable others. If you are struggling with the confusion and the slow processing, hang in there. It might get better for you like it did for me.

Dinner with Friends

Sometimes, it turns out the only thing I really needed after all was dinner with my friends. I went to a Mardi Gras party last night at my friends' house, and I had the best time I've had in a long while. We used to have a supper club where we went from house to house once a month, but with the stresses of jobs, night classes, and increasing numbers of children in our group, it sort of fell by the wayside. I knew I missed those monthly dinners, but until last night, I really didn't know just how much I was missing them.

I felt connected for the first time in a long time again. I found out things that were going on with people that I've known, literally, all my life, but I haven't seen continuously for more than ten or fifteen minutes at a time in months. We ate good food, kept saying that we needed to go home as the hour got later and later, and the number one thing that everyone said over and over again was, we have to do this again. Why haven't we been doing this?

If nobody else can host the next one, I will do it. I will decrapify my house and figure out something to prepare, but I'll play hostess. It was too nice to have that communion with people who know me and with whom I actually have things in common. There were no social status measuring, no games, no ulterior motives, and no politics in play. I didn't have to play who do you know, what do you drink, or how much do you make. In my current world, that is too precious not to have it happen again.

Ups and Downs

After four continuous days of having to listen to my friend go on and on about how excited he is about his upcoming "not a date" with the woman in the skimpy costume, I am finally growing numb, or at least resigned to it. Wednesday, I went off on him for his general insensitivity, but it skipped right over his head. I don't guess I was explicit enough. Thursday, I wasn't able to meet that group, and today, I had just decided that if it came up, I wasn't going to rise to the bait. I was very proud of myself. Now if I can just make it through his joyous retellings of whatever happens once he's actually been to the party with this person and this costume (however many days it takes him to relate that) without killing him for being a thickheaded and insensitive male, then life can go on.

It's been a tough week, even without that whole thing going on. Wednesday was the worst, starting off with an earring dropped down a sink drain (one of my jade ones carefully brought back from Thailand; I hope Dad can get it out), forgetting to put my trash out at the bottom of the driveway and it blowing off the roof of my PT Cruiser into the middle of the interstate and my having to retrieve it at 6:15 a.m., and so on. It ended with my Shakespeare professor belittling my profession as "unrespectable" since we high school teachers have to do things like keep bus duty, etc., and all have classrooms that are out of control (? Has he been in my room lately?). It was a long, long day.

The week ended on a high note, though. I got wonderful news today, sort of reward for not picking up a chair at some point and thrashing my friend with it, maybe. One of my students selected me as Star Teacher. I was totally blown away. I never expected such an honor to come to me. When the counselor came to tell me about it, I was completely dumbfounded for a minute. It means so much to me to have been chosen, especially since it's coming just now in the middle of all this horrible crap of the oncoming birthday.

After school, I went to my favorite junktique shop, and tomorrow I have a gathering of friends to go to, so I am hoping that now that January is finally dead and gone that things will begin to lighten up. It's been a rough start to the year, but maybe that's done now.

AngrySadTired -- You Probaby Don't Want to Read This

And yet words are necessary to deal with it for me. You might just want to skip this one. Go read another post.

Recently, I was in a gathering of friends and the commentary turned Mardi Gras. A friend of mine is going to a party that requires costumes, and the person he's going with apparently has a costume that displays her rather nice figure rather nicely. Although I don't think he's dating this person, the combination of costume and pulchritude was apparently enough to get his mind going in that direction.

His comment and his awe over her figure just touched a nerve in me that's always raw, but never more than at this time of the year. I swear to God that I am so sick and tired of men and their inability to see beyond T and A that I cannot stand it anymore. I am tired of watching stick figures prance around half clothed on TV. I am tired of watching men ogle every pair of breasts that happens to shape themselves under a shirt. More than any of this, though, I am tired of the physical being the end-all, be-all measuring stick of a woman's worth.

Is there really not one single one of them who isn't looking for a Barbie doll? I mean, really? I am nobody's Barbie doll. I'm built more along the Amazon warrior lines, and stick figure is not a label that could ever have been stuck on me, not even when I was playing basketball in high school and running line drills, laps, and bleachers everyday. I'm really tall, and my body curves. Why can't that be okay, too, with somebody? I have a fierce mind, a strong body, and a brave heart. Why can't that be good, too? Why should I have to have D cup breasts, blond hair, and be the size of a freaking porcelain doll to be attractive?

As of that conversation, I officially give up. I have heard it all too many times now. I have also heard all the palliatives (The right man will find you beautiful; Different people find different things attractive), and I think they're all crap. All the men of my acquaintance chase the same old stereotypes although they may put a different hair color on top. Screw it. In a way, maybe it will be a relief to quit looking. I know my own value, and if they can't see it, then to hell with them all.

Wishing

I haven't felt much like writing lately, and I've been busy, too, so the posts have been pretty sparse. Sooner or later, I'm going to post about Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, but I'm still in the middle of it. It's emotionally a very hard read for me, and I don't know yet how long it's going to take me to finish it.

Mostly, lately I just wish I could spend some time away. I need a trip out of country where nobody knows me. Sometimes, just being here where everywhere I go there's I teach or have taught absolutely wears me out. I have to be "Teacher Woman" all the time. While I know that is a part of the responsibility, and probably "Teacher Woman" isn't really all that different from any other aspect of my personality, sometimes I miss being a totally private citizen who can go to the bookstore in shleppy jeans and no makeup without having to worry about running into little Mary Sue and her Eager Parents.

Maybe I'll go out of town this coming weekend and enjoy being unknown somewhere else. It would be nice to have a change, just for a little while anyway. I'm just tired.

Wrap Your Mind Around This One

The truth is more important than the facts.
Frank Lloyd Wright

Part of me, when I first saw this quote, instinctively went, "Yeah. Deep, man." Of course, I've been up something like seventeen hours at this point, and I really, really need to go to bed. When next I looked at it, I began to say, "But wait, can one divorce the truth from the facts? What is truth? How does it relate to the facts?" Then, I decided that what I need to do most right now is stop surfing and blogging and get some rest before I hit that Zen state in which one begins to ponder whether or not one's personal reality is true for everyone around one, a state found most commonly in dorm rooms late the night before major papers are due but nevertheless dangerously near anytime it's late and the brain is tired. I leave it to you gentle reader to tangle with good old FLW.

Mississippi Snow

We had one of those rare Mississippi snowstorms this past weekend. It dropped about three inches of snow, and we all headed outdoors to gawk in wonder. Mom, Dad, and I loaded up in Dad's huge, battered brown four-wheel drive Dodge and drove up to the Old Place to look at the snow on the pastures there. It was beautiful. I took a lot of pictures and fought to breathe, but it was worth it to see the trees wearing their rare mantle of white.

All up and down the roads, hastily-assembled snowmen could be seen. Every one I passed made me smile, even the ones that had more leaves than snow in the the bases. I guess people in states that get a lot of snow can afford to wait for a good depth or be blase about it, but we here in Mississippi have to take it like we can get it if we intend to get any snowmen at all.

After our recent bout of rain, the last lingering vestiges that had been sheltered are gone, but the memories of our recent whitening remain. It may be several years before we see that much snow again and all the snow people reemerge. Maybe we stored up enough enjoyment until it comes again.

Headed for Thirty-two

As I dragged my aching, coughing, barely-functional body back and forth from the library Friday while my classes were doing credit checks, I noticed that the teachers downstairs have already put up Valentine's Day bulletin boards. Although usually I am the first teacher on board the overboard holiday decor train, there is not one scrap of pink or red anywhere near my door yet, nor will there be for at least a few more days. You see, as we get closer to the day of the stupid blind flying infant we also get closer to the anniversary of my thirty-second year on this earth.

I have heard all sorts of people complain about having their birthdays coupled with a major holiday. I have relatives and friends whose birthdays get lost in the shuffle with Christmas and Thanksgiving. I put forth to them, however, that there is no double-whammy as crappy as the one barreling down on me in less than four weeks. Soon, every place I look will be festooned with a nauseating amount of red, pink, lace, glitter, and reminders that roses, candy, and affection will rain down from the heavens all around me, sort of a reverse Charlie Brown black rain cloud effect. Only in my little spot will it be dry. Add to this, then, the merry nudge from Father Time that another year has come and gone, and you've got a recipe fit for all sorts of glee.

I wish I could build a sort of bunker somewhere and just hide out in it from New Year's Eve until the end of February. Every person I know has "big plans" to treat their special someone well (more power to them), or somehow miraculously manages to dig up a special someone for the duration of the holidays. I'd settle for a good friend to go to dinner with. It's not even safe to go to the store to buy groceries. One has to run the gauntlet through aisles filled to the top of twenty-foot ceilings with giant stuffed animals, overly-cute knickknacks, and chocolate, the soul salve of lonely like me.

Just for once, just for once, I'd like to be able to look forward to my birthday. I'd like to have a great guy, or at least a great guyfriend, and be going to do something interesting. I don't want diamonds and pearls. I don't expect a man to break the bank with roses and trinkets. Oh how wonderful it would be, though, if thirty-two didn't have to loom in the distance a monolith carved out of black stone.....

Matters of Trust

I have been sick lately, the usual sinus crud, but it's been making me wish I could find a quiet corner to curl up and die in. I have stubbornly and foolishly been dragging myself through my regular routine, so by yesterday evening, I was to the point of shaking weakness and tears. Why, oh why, don't I just take the kind of advice I would give others? Go home and rest....

Anyway, sometime during the past few days, I was with a gathering of friends, and listening to a conversation about how men should treat women. One of the guys was talking about how to treat a woman, and his ideas included wine, firelight, and poetry. The other women at the table were pretty much astounded that any man could come up with something like that on his own since so many men seem to have no idea whatsoever that fire can be used for anything but destruction or food preparation and that poetry exists outside required and loathed coursework long forgotten. Even in my weakened and sickened state, I thought his ideas were pretty good, too. The guy in question is a real sweetheart. He's recently been treated about as badly as you can be by a woman, and yet he still manages to come up with something like this, so that's another gold star in the plus column for him.

At that moment, though, everything froze. A ghost entered the room, at least for me. I could practically see T., my ex, standing in the doorway smirking. He, too, knew about the value of poetry, wine, and firelight. He knew all kinds of things about what women like and how we work. In fact, he'd made it sort of his life's passionate study. He prided himself on it. The great downside to this, of course, is that he couldn't be bothered to please only one woman. There were far too many of us in the world who needed his tender ministrations....

The ghost was only there for me. Nobody else noticed, and since I was sick and largely just sort of sitting in the corner suffering anyway, I doubt my expression actually changed much. I just wonder if there's ever going to come a time when I don't have to look at guys and not think of the ghosts of the past.

All Things Jane, and, Soapbox, Here I Come

Jane Austen, my hero, is much in the media these days with PBS's Masterpiece Theater (or are the Theatre sort? I can never remember...) makeover. Maybe she's never out of the media. I keep thinking back to the movie that came out last year (or was it two? Ah, Topamax...) with the Horrid Stick Figure cast as Lizzy. I still haven't seen it. I should bite the proverbial bullet and get it through Netflix just to see how bad a thing can be, but each time I think of the Stick Insect trying to be one of the most wonderfully bright and independent women in literature, I feel a little queasy.

I read a blog called AustenBlog that keeps up with "all things Jane". Their tagline is "one lump of snark or two?", so you can sort of tell what tone the site has. I love it. They had a brief bit recently about a company that was going to publish dumbed-down editions of the big six Austen novels for children and busy adults. I know I felt more than a bit queasy at that.

What's the point? Why even bother to read it? Also, why do adults always assume that children can't handle the real thing? I was reading the real thing when I was in about the fifth grade, thank you very much. I can't see that it did me much harm not to have watered-down pap packaged and forced down my throat instead of trusting that my brain could stretch to meet the challenge. Maybe I had to ask my parents what a word meant. Maybe I had to, God forbid, go get a dictionary off a shelf.

It all goes back to the great contradiction so present in everything else. We pretend and pretend that we want our children/students/selves to reach for high goals and lofty ideals, but when it comes right down to it, instead of giving them the real Jane Austen and a dictionary, we give them the faux Austen and tell them that's all they're capable of handling. What a crappy cheat. I hope that the kids who get stuck with the pseudo-Austen find out that there's something missing and seek it for themselves. It's too sad to contemplate otherwise. She's lasted this long and been this popular for a good reason.

Good Old Ernest.....

Never mistake motion for action.
Ernest Hemingway

Early Morning Dog Story

So this morning, I let the dogs out early and went about the business of getting ready to head to school as I usually do. When I was putting food out for them a bit later, I could hear the high-pitched strident barks from Roux that mean she's into something "good" coming from across the road. At first, I thought the noise was dogfight noise, and my fear was that the horrible brown stray had wandered back into my yard. Then I listened more carefully, and I recognized the yips of frustration which come whenever Roux can't quite get to whatever it is that she wants. I went back inside after calling her for a few minutes to finish getting ready.

When I drove down the driveway, I stopped and walked across the road to the woods where the dogs were. I found them dancing around the base of a sapling about as thick as my upper arm. At the top of that sapling, swaying precariously, was a very large opossum who was doing its level best to appear invisible. Yelldo came to me, and I picked his little yellow butt up and put him in the car. Roux, though, just ran close enough to wag her tail at me and give me a big toothy pit bull grin and ran away again.

She would dash up to the trunk of the tree, lean against it causing it to sway, stand under the swinging possum, and then, when there was no falling mammal, she would go take a few bites out of the trunk of the tree. I have never seen any dog do this. She was literally chewing down the stupid tree. By the time I got to the scene, she had removed long strips of the trunk of the sapling, and about half its trunk was gone.

I called her and tried to entice, coerce, and finally berate her for about fifteen minutes to no avail. She was in a place I could not get to, and I had to go to school ultimately. I don't know what happened with the possum. I asked my dad to go down and check on her when he got off work, and when he got there, Roux was hale and healthy, so I don't think she caught the possum. As big as it was, there would be tell-tale signs. I haven't had a chance to go across the road to see if she finally managed to fell the tree. I think I'll save that adventure for tomorrow.

Knowledge

Tonight was the first night of one of my new night classes, and I learned something completely unknown. I now know what was regained when the Renaissance came in. Before tonight, I had always been taught that it was just the "rebirth of knowledge" or the "rediscovery of Greek and Latin classical texts." My professor tonight taught me that in the West, the last scholars of Greek, actually, the very last, had been killed off by his students, and the reading and speaking knowledge of the language had died. For a couple of hundred years, nobody could read Homer or Plato or Socrates. Nobody could get to the stories of the Iliad or the Odyssey or Medea or Antigone, and oh, how they wanted to... The Italians, heirs to the legacy of Rome, understood that the Romans had based much of their culture on the foundations that Greece had painstakingly laid, but those texts were mute since the language in which they were written was a dead one for them.

Can you imagine it? We take it for granted that we can walk into a bookstore and lay hands on volume after volume of knowledge in our own language. I watch school kids casually discard or groan under the study of these same stories that were almost completely lost forever during the time after the fall of the Roman Empire.

I didn't know that until tonight. I didn't know how close we came to losing them forever. I always assumed that when the textbooks said they were rediscovered during the Renaissance, that the real meaning was that people finally had enough time to stop worrying about disease, war, and famine carrying them away long enough to pick up something extraneous to survival again, and that was indeed part of it. More to the point, though, is that until they found the Greek-speaking-and-reading refugees from Constantinople's Orthodox churches, there was nobody who could begin the process of unlocking the rich wonders within those ancient texts for them.

No wonder the Renaissance authors were so crazy about translations and getting their hands on every ancient text they could. They probably wanted to make sure the same thing could never happen again as well as feeding that deep hunger for knowledge. Who can read a little of the Odyssey and not want more? Who can start the Oedipus cycle and not want to know how it turns out for the poor, fate-doomed man?

It was a good night of class, and to be honest, I'm looking forward to going back despite the huge amount of work this class is going to be (a play a week). If I can pick up something this monumental every week, it will be time well spent. Maybe this is something everybody else in the world already knew, but I missed it somehow. I'm glad to know it now.

Selfish Days

Every once in a great while, I feel worn thin by things that I normally very much enjoy doing. Right now is one of those moments. It's not that I had a really stressful day. There was no drama today. In fact, there's been a minimum of drama lately, a fact for which I am profoundly grateful. It's more a case of having too much to do and that load increasing gradually, sort of like the old Puritan torture of pressing, I guess, where they keep laying one stone after another on top of a person. I am overcommitted in the highest possible degree, and this afternoon, I found another thing that "needs doing", but I cannot possibly fit it into my schedule, and I'm frustrated and ill with myself and the situation.

As I'm listening to the rain on the roof and getting ready to go take a shower and have an early bedtime in order to face tomorrow, my first day with night classes in the new semester, I am having a selfish day. I want to have a childish tantrum in which I put my fingers in my ears and refuse to listen to the voices that are asking me to do all these various and sundry things I've been asked to do. I want to run as fast as I can away from my obligations and find a big playground with a swing set and a slide. I want to close my door and turn off my light and pretend like there's nobody home.

None of this will actually help anything. It will truly only make me feel worse for having done it. I guess this miniature rebellion is probably a warning sign that I need to take a step back and assess my load, and that I need to be cautious about making sure I add in some time for less juvenile release valves. Maybe I need to budget the funds for Civ IV this month after all....

January

I'm heading into my January slump. I can feel it creeping up like a slow mist rolling across an open field. January stinks. Even though I try not to judge it based on previous editions, there's just something about the month that's fundamentally grey and gloomy. Maybe it's the weather. Maybe it's the end of the sparkly wonder of Christmas. Maybe it's the poverty or the impending crapfest double-whammy of Valentine's Day and my birthday hovering right around the corner. It just always seems that the sunless and cloudy skies creep into the corners of my heart during January, and I have a hard time shaking them out again. If there are fewer posts here for awhile, just chalk it up my not wanting to inflict my January blues on the rest of the world.

What We Believe About Ourselves

I was watching What Not to Wear tonight, and they had a sort of "best of" show on tonight with clips from some of their favorite cases/episodes. I watched the shortened versions of episodes, many of which I'd already seen, and I was struck by the almost universal theme running under the different bad outfits and hairdos: a belief, conscious or unconscious, that the woman was fundamentally unattractive. Once Stacy and Clinton had done their work, which basically consists of pointing the person away from things the person probably knew weren't a good idea anyway, and the hair and makeup artists come in, the person is able to see the fundamental truth that there is beauty in every human being. This is probably my favorite thing about the show, that moment when the woman suddenly realizes that, whether she is carrying more weight than the gurus say is proper or is smaller than supermodels in the magazines, she is lovely.

Why is it that we all seem to believe that we're ugly? When I think about my own circle of girl friends and indeed over most of the women I have known in my lifetime, all but a handful have had some secret belief that some portion of their anatomy, if not their whole anatomy, is hideous. Why do we believe this? Where does this come from? If this is true, it means that every woman I know is ugly. That just can't be true. My friends are beautiful people. They have husbands who love them and think they are the centers of the known universe. Where does this inner whisper come from?

I am familiar with the voice myself. I know its insidious voice. I even know some of the reasons why I hear it. Knowing why it's there doesn't really make it easier to combat sometimes. Even though I strive to accept myself as I am, some days, I find myself fighting that same old image in the mirror.

I so wish that we could all, even in our analysis of ourselves, get past the external or just embrace the external that is there and learn to love it. There is so much beauty under that surface and so much potential. Isn't a shame that we bind ourselves to so much less than we're capable of and lose the chance to know so many people as they truly are because of this?

Back to the Real World

I had to force myself to get up this morning when the alarm went off. We're having a stretch of bitterly cold weather, so crawling out from under the covers and cats before dawn was not high on my list of priorities.

It's always so hard to return to routine after a holiday. Even though I eventually get bored and restless during a long break (I wasn't quite there yet, however), I hate getting up so early. That's really my least favorite part of my whole job, when I think about it. If I could sleep one more hour every morning and still get to school on time, my job satisfaction would go up about 40%. How sad is that?

I've always wondered why school has to start at some ungodly early hour. I think I know most of the reasons, including the fact that kids, especially little ones need to be "babysat" during their parents' working hours and that originally in rural areas students would become working members of their families upon their return home with chores on the farm. I wish now, though, that we'd revisit the issue and start school at 9:00. Not going to happen, but I can still dream.

Well, tomorrow the kids will be back, so I had better go fortify myself mentally....

An Interesting Notion for the New Year

Through another blog I read, I found a link to this blog and this list, the Daily Decalogue of Pope John XXIII. I made a copy of it to print off and put on my desk because the ideas here are really appealing to me, mostly because it seems that it's based on focusing on day at a time. You might see if any of them are useful to you. Happy New Year, everyone.

The End Approaches

As the year draws to a close, two things are certain to happen in my life. First, I will definitely have the mad and uncontrollable urge to clean my house, even the dark and secret rooms to which the doors are never opened when others are present. Second, I will begin to review the year past and go over it with the proverbial and cliched finetoothed comb to see how my life has changed for better and for worse in the year coming to an end. I suppose that both processes are actually two different expressions of the same need to set all things in order, as it were, before one things ends and a new thing begins.

New Year's Day is an arbitrary, manmade date on a calendar. It doesn't even line up with anything astronomically significant as once it did. That's why the power it has to make a person, well me anyway, stop and take stock of things never ceases to surprise me. Sitting up late and watching the old year die and the new year be born, even though I know it's sort of a created thing is moving. Every year, I say that I will simply go to bed early (tired out from all the manic housework, you see) and just let the old year go in peace, but year after year, I find myself staring at the clock at 11:59 with everybody else in this part of the world waiting for 200_ to dissolve into 200_.

I don't go out and party on New Years. I never have been a big partygoer. (Those of you who know me are shocked beyond all knowledge, I know.) I've often thought that the purpose of New Year's parties might be to help people not reflect so much, but rather to focus on the fact that regardless of what happened, it's over, everybody present survived in some form or another, and life marches on. Despite the fact that I'm not really a big fan of drunken revelry and the inevitable regretfest that follows it, (I mean, be an idiot if you want to, but live to remember it, and how much fun is it really if you have to pray nobody took any pictures of it?) there is something to be said in joining together with your friends in celebration of having made it through another long year and in defiance of whatever might be hurled at you by the Fates in the year to come.

I suppose however we choose to meet the New Year, in solitary reflection or group defiance and celebration, the point is that we are here to meet it at all. That's something to be grateful for. No matter what scars we may have earned in the year past, we survived. May we be stronger and wiser for it in the year to come.

Good Quote

There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.
Saint Thomas Aquinas

Dell Yeah

Okay, so it's well known that I'm not Dell's biggest fan, but I had to do something. My school-sponsored Gateway laptop has become capricious at best and downright irritating-bordering-on-suicidal at worst, so I needed a machine that was both mine and capable. I was planning on getting one myself, but my parents decided that they would get me something "big" this year for Christmas, and, voila, I have a new Dell. I won't get into all the gruesome specs other than to say it runs Vista and it's a dual-core machine which makes it so much faster than anything else I've used before that it's usually sitting and tapping its fingers waiting for me rather than the other way round. That's a nice change.

I did get a 19" monitor to go with it, and the sheer joy of having a screen that I don't have to peer down into my lap to look at is amazing. When I was working on our church bulletin a little while ago, the page actually was big enough to see. Wow.

My only big computing ambition now that I finally found the "hidden" application data folder so I could move my address book from one machine to the other is to purchase Civ IV so I can come home, feed my cats/dogs, and disappear into my office for the evening. I have noble goals, I think, sure to help me get lots and lots of productive work done around the house and for school.....

Sick for the Holidays

I don't know what it is but it stinks. I have a headache, a fever, and I'm nauseous beyond belief. I have been mostly debilitated for the past two days, but I spent the whole day today in bed. I hope tomorrow is better. I don't want the rest of my holiday to be spent having to recover from some mystery illness.

Christmas Dinner

It's the end of Christmas day, and it's been a good one here in Podunk. I got up fairly early and finished up some housecleaning in preparation for having my family over for Christmas dinner. This is the first time that I've done the whole Christmas dinner thing myself, so I wanted everything to be just so.

I've done a potluck Thanksgiving for my friends, and I usually do a brunch for my family on Christmas, but for too long now, my family hasn't had a big meal for Christmas or Thanksgiving. We always seem to have some major crisis, personal or physical, come up right at Thanksgiving or Christmas, and the whole holiday gets sort of preempted. The holidays just seem to get lost in the shuffle, and I miss them terribly.

Despite my best intentions to the contrary, it happened at Thanksgiving this year. I had a big family meal planned, and I had sworn that come heck or high water, we were going to have the full-on turkey dinner at my house. I had even gone so far as to buy a very lovely tablecloth for the occasion, but then my mom got sick, and the whole thing just sort of fell apart. We had a small meal, but nobody felt much like going to the effort involved to do a big dinner.

About a week after Thanksgiving, though, Dad got a ten-pound turkey, already seasoned and cooked, from work as a part of his Christmas bonus this year, and that was the centerpiece of the meal. This time, the hard part was already done, and I knew that I could do the rest if that killer part of it was already done for me.

I dealt with the remaining preparations for the turkey and about half of what was left of the rest of the meal and my mom brought the other half. I used the beautiful red linen tablecloth I got on sale a few years ago and have never had an occasion to use and put one of my favorite 1940's luncheonette cloths over it, one with Shiny Brites and holly on it. I used my good white Southern Living dishes and pulled out candles, too. It was no Martha Stewart production, but I was proud enough of it to have taken a picture of it.


We all sat down and had a meal at the table, not in front of the TV, not sitting on the couch, and it was wonderful. We should do it more often. Although there were far fewer of us than there were when this was my Granny's house, it reminded me of those Christmas dinners we had then. I think this house has missed being a place where people come for those together times. I know I have missed those times being held here. It's so hard to make those times happen with schedules being what they are, but as I was smoothing my hands over the tablecloths, laying them out and enjoying their colorful patterns, I kept thinking to myself, "Why isn't this a priority, too? Isn't this time just as important, just as vital as the other things that I do?"

The best gift I got today wasn't in a box or an envelope, although I am grateful for those things, too. The best gift I got was having my family with me around my table spending time together. Even after everyone was gone and I was washing up in the kitchen, I still felt the glow of it like a candle flame. What a beautiful thing to have been given for Christmas.

Drafted

So last night when I showed up to warm up for evening services, our music director and an assortment of others were playing various stringed instruments in preparation for special music. I suddenly found myself drafted to be the vocal segment. Our choir director is stealthy and subtle that way. All of a sudden, one just sort of finds one's self in front of the congregation holding a microphone a little uncertain of how one got there.

I actually like to sing. I sing all the time in my car, in my house, in my classroom when all the students are gone at the end of the day. I sing going to work and while I'm cleaning the house. It's a different thing, though, to stand up in front of the whole church, even though it's composed of people I have known all my life, and sing. I get so nervous.

These songs were some of my favorites, though, and that helped. I sang "What Child Is This?" and "Silent Night", my two favorite Christmas songs, and we also did "Joy to the World", too. I don't know about the quality of the music I produced, but the feeling and the sentiment were certainly there. Since the Psalms simply say that God wants us to make a joyful noise, hopefully God was pleased.

Harry Dresden, Wizard

Okay, so I'm about seven years behind on discovering this series, but I did at last find it, and I'm really enjoying it. The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher is one of the most original series of fantasy that I've picked up in a long, long time. I can see echoes of other things in it, as is to be expected, but not unpleasant echoes. It's an original world Butcher has made with appealing characters, and although I'm only four books into the series, I really like what he's done with them so far.

My dad has been raving about this series for a long time now, but I've just had too many other literary obligations to pick up a new series. Also, to be quite frank, most of the new authors I've picked up in the last five years or so have been less than stellar. They've either been wholesale rip-offs of the grandmasters of yore (and dime store copies at that), or so trite and predictable that I could see what was coming before I'd finished the first page. Butcher's work is neither. It's a pleasant cross between a sort of magic-meets-the-real-world fusion and mystery, a mix I find pleasing. I also like the ways in which he develops Harry Dresden, his main character, and the world of magic.

All in all, it's a nice diversion. I'm ripping through the series, and even though I'm pretty far behind, I'm hoping to get through the series during the holidays. I'll finish up book four today, and at the rate of about a book a day or two, I should be through what's been published before I go back to school. I desperately needed a break from Faulkner, Shakespeare, and dystopia. Thank God for Harry Dresden.

Christmas Shopping

Today was a day of finishing up the last bits of Christmas shopping. I spent the better part of the day going from one part of town to the other, but I noticed a difference this year: people weren't frothing at the mouth and trying to kill each other. It was nice. I don't know if this is because it's not yet Christmas Eve or if some miraculous transformation has swept over Podunk, but I really appreciated it. Checkers were personable, people were wishing each other Merry Christmas, shoppers held open doors for one another, people standing in line were courteous and waved each other ahead, and even drivers waiting to pull into moving traffic were allowing other cars out ahead of them. I kept feeling like I was in some sort of Christmas movie instead of the snarling mass of hateful humanity I had left the house expecting this morning, but I am genuinely and truly grateful for that surprise.

Christmas shopping shouldn't be something that turns people into Satan's little helpers, and if it does that to them, then I think they should probably just go home for a little while, or get everything online. To me, going shopping for Christmas gifts is a little stressful because I am always teaching right up until the last minute, but I actually enjoy trying to find things I think the special people in my life will like and use. Of course, there are a couple of them that I can NEVER find anything for, but that's what God made gift certificates for, after all.... I'm sure not everybody today was wearing angel wings, and I'm sure that had I stayed in town on into the late afternoon, or if I were to go back Monday, some of the politesse would have worn away, but for now, all I can say is it was awful nice to see some of the Christmas spirit alive and well even in the institutions of commerce.

More Interstate Angst

So today as I was driving home minding my own business, a guy in a big green Dodge pickup in front of me apparently had forgotten the first and most vital rule of hauling anything in the bed of a truck: tie it down. I was letting my parents know I was on the way home when I had to yell and throw down the cell to swerve.

A queen or king-sized box springs and at least part of the metal bed frame the green Dodge genius had used to try to hold it down with blew out of his back end, spiraled up into the air, crashed into the middle of the two lanes of the west-bound interstate, and caused all manner of swerving and problems. Fortunately, nobody was immediately behind him. I was one of the closest, and I was probably four car lengths behind, so I had plenty of time to evade the flying mattress parts, but it was a scary moment. I wasn't at all sure the thing wasn't going to stay airborne and crash through my windshield for a few minutes, and then when it finally touched down, it sort of went end-over-end, and I wasn't sure where everybody else was going to go.

The metal bits were like shrapnel, and I think one lady might have run over some of it. I couldn't tell what happened. I just swerved left into my part of the median and kept going. There was no place to stop, and it was a good place to get run over by the 60 mph traffic. I hope there were no big accidents after I made it through, but I'm going to be surprised if there weren't. After I cleared it, the box springs were laying in the other lane mostly obstructing it and the five o'clock rush hadn't quite gotten started. The guy in the truck took an off-ramp, so hopefully he was going back to clean up his mess. Maybe next time he puts something in the back of his truck, he'll also tie it down.

Highway Patrol

This afternoon on the way home, I watched the dynamics on the interstate with amusement. The powerful dark gray highway patrol cruiser slid into the flow of traffic just ahead of me, and instantly the 80-something mph traffic became 65-ish mph traffic. The trooper was just sort of gliding along in his own little world as they are prone to do, but behind him, the traffic began to stack up. Vehicles that usually blow me off the road raced past, saw the distinctive shape and color of the trooper's car, and hit their brakes.

It was like an ocean documentary. I felt like there should be a voice-over. "The great white shark cruises majestically, unconcerned with the small fish that dart around it. It waits for larger prey. All those around it, however, are acutely aware of its presence...." It was too funny.

Eventually, the highway patrolman got tired of hanging out with the regular speed limit folk, and he did what I'd love to do: hit the gas on that big engine and took off with no fear of anybody ticketing him. Once he was gone, all the little fish resumed their frantic forward motion. It was interesting to watch while it lasted, though.

Happiness Is....

After a long and particularly satisfying day of time spent doing things I enjoy, I present the following list. It is by no means exhaustive.

Happiness is....

1)waking up snug in a feather bed on a cold winter morning and listening to the wind howling out side...and knowing you don't have to get up unless you want to.

2) spending an afternoon reading in a comfortable chair replete with an quilt and one or more cats.

3) the smell and taste of oranges as you peel them with your hands, a delightful mess. They just don't taste as good daintily quartered by a knife.

4) the sound of snoring dogs on the couch.

5) knowing there are only three days left until Christmas vacation.

6) getting on the scale and watching the numbers continuing to get smaller and smaller every time I do.

7) wandering aimlessly in a bookstore without time constraints and then having a copy of the new Greg Iles novel waiting for an all-night-read-a-thon (thanks again for the tip, AC).

8) being told recently by some students that they felt like they were learning in my classes.

9) eating homemade pizza off my Santa Claus dishes.

10) driving up to my house and seeing it all aglow in Christmas lights.

There are more, but right now, these are the ones to list. God is good.

A General State of Weariness and Confusion

My head is confused, partially because of good old Topamax, partially because of end-of-semester stress, and partially because of a strange situation in which I suddenly find myself. The situation is one of those things I keep telling myself to simply put on the shelf and watch from a distance to see what develops, but I've never been very good at that kind of thing. No patience, you see....

I keep mentally grabbing it up again and again and toying with it in my head, turning it over and over until the corners are wearing off it, but nothing about the situation is really getting resolved. I find myself sitting at my desk when I should be grading papers, and I'm suddenly aware that the situation has thrust vine-like tentacles into every part of my consciousness and that I haven't really processed a word of the paper in front of me for the last paragraph. It's a huge effort of will to beat it back into a corner of my mind and make it stay there for any length of time. About the time I get my mental discipline together, the source of whole problem shakes everything up again by adding some little tidbit to the puzzle, and then off I go, trying to sort all the pieces out again. This may just drive me crazy before I figure it out or before it goes away on its own.

Mercifully, the holidays are a mere three days away, and then I can hide out here at home, see my far-flung friends, and generally recharge batteries that are running dangerously low. Perhaps with some rest and distance the puzzle will actually turn out to be like one of those little word finds from grade school instead of a translation exercise involving Latin, Sanskrit, and hieroglyphics.....

Too Darn Hot

Now I've got the Cole Porter song going around in circles in my head....

It really is. It's mid-December, and today I think we hit 80 degrees. This is insane! I finally gave up a few moments ago and switched the central unit back to a/c. I'm tired of being hot. The summer was bad enough; it's officially winter, and I want some cold winter.

Now, let's not take this as an invitation to the gods of arctic cold to stride in. I'm just tired of wondering if I should wear sandals and crops to work in December. Where's our Christmas-y weather?

The Quote that Sums Up My Life

If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day.
- John A. Wheeler

If this is true, then every day of my life is a banner day.....

Uneven

Only the mediocre are always at their best.
Jean Giraudoux

I'm trying to take comfort in this quote. Lately, I feel like I've been up and down. Today was a perfect example of insane ups and downs. Maybe all Mondays are uneven.

The day started with my eyes flying open at about 4:30 for no readily apparent reason. I guess I shouldn't have taken that long nap yesterday afternoon. I tried and tried to go back to sleep, but eventually, I just gave up and got up to start the day.

Once I got to school, I had some copies to run, but when a colleague of mine ran the first copy of the day, the machine lit up like a Christmas tree and jammed in every location. He and I looked at each other in something like shock and spent the next fifteen minutes buried inside the machine searching for the elusive (and in my opinion, imaginary) fragment of paper that the copier kept registering as hiding somewhere deep within the recesses.

I believe the copier was just lying in wait for the first soul unfortunate enough to lay a piece of paper on the glass plate. The overuse has made it into a sentient beast, and now, in our hour of greatest need, it lies, predatory and silent in the early morning hours purring to itself softly, contemplating what mischief it may cause for the one who approaches it first. Other days, I think it plays "eineey-meenie-mineey-moe" to pick its target. On the other hand, I might be tired and paranoid about the machinery....

The day continued to much the same mix of hectic situations broken by moments of frantic grading as I am trying to get everything completed for the end of term. By the time seventh period arrived, I was exhausted, but I felt as though I had accomplished a lot. Maybe with a few more days, some of the unevenness will level out.

Topamax Again

One of the worst things for me to adjust to with the Topamax has been the problem of what it does to me when I try to do "online" processing tasks like reading or sight-reading music. For some reason, if it's not a piece of literature or music that I'm familiar with, I don't seem to process as fast as I used to. There's a delay or lag that never used to be there.

It's much worse with music than with simple reading, perhaps because of the added step of converting the notes to a motion of the hand. Last Sunday night, during one of the hymns we were doing, the notes on the page simply stopped making sense. They were like a Rorschach test, and I literally couldn't recognize a single note on the page. I started shaking, and it only lasted a few measures, but it seemed like an eternity. I finally found a chord that I recognized and was able to get back into it, but I was shaky the rest of the service.

I stumble a lot more with my reading than I used to as well. I hate that because reading aloud is such a big part of my job, too. I just do the best I can with it and go on, but these two things together have really been profoundly difficult for me to deal with. My doctor tells me that they are just natural functions of my brain chemistry adjusting to the medicine, and that some of the symptoms should go away as time progresses.

In truth, some things have gotten better. Many of those early symptoms of weariness have gone away. I only forget words occasionally. The migraines are certainly better. This one big obstacle remains. I just hope it goes away, too. I can't stand the thought of having to stop playing. It's been a part of my life for 25 years now, and to lose that would be profound.

Doodling and Distracted

I have a lot on my mind lately, some good things, some bad, so tonight's special meeting of the class-that-never-ends didn't bode well for my concentration. Although I love the class and I adore the teacher, I loathe the piece of literature we're working on right now, Spencer's tiresome epic The Faerie Queene. I keep praying Redcrosse will just get his sorry act together or that Una will get a spine and a sword.

I spent most of the four-hour block of class doodling and writing instead of listening. I couldn't focus on Una's perilous quest. I certainly didn't care about it. I hope I can get my thoughts collected before tomorrow night's marathon and final six hour bout with it. If not, I guess I'll kill more trees.

Tranquility

I spent most of the evening walking through the woods on some property we have far, far back in the woods on dirt roads looking for a Christmas tree. My parents have decided to sell timber, so this year, we are all going to get timber from that land before the crews cut all the little trees with the big ones.

The light was lovely through the trees. We still have beautiful colors despite the fact that it's December. I walked through the twilight and the old, old roads in country so deep there was no people noise at all anywhere. It was perfectly peaceful.

After dark fell and we failed to find "the tree", we drove down to one of the lower pastures of the property to look at a project my parents have going there. The sun had faded, but that deep indigo blue remained. There is no light pollution from any source there, so it's a perfect place to go to watch the stars. I could have stood there for hours, even with the night coldness creeping in. I hope I'm going to have lots of time to spend there during Christmas.

Wonderful Weekend

This weekend has gone fast, but it's been wonderful. I have been planning it for a month, and it came together perfectly. Another person was able to take care of the bulletin at the church for me, so I had the weekend off from that, and I had all day yesterday to do two things in Jackson that only come around once a year.

The first part of it was the Chimneyville Crafts Festival. I look forward to this show every year. Just walking around and looking at the amazing talents and innovations of the craftspeople is a lift to my soul. I wish I had the time to try to develop the amazing skills they have. It's a sea of beauty. The textures of the silks, glass, wood, wool, silver, jewels, and my favorite, the pottery, beg to be touched, stroked, lifted, and admired. By the time I was halfway through the show, I felt glutted with beauty, and my tiny pittance of a paycheck was long gone.

Several of the items I bought this year were actually things I had seen last year and craved for a whole year because either I couldn't afford them last year or because somebody else beat me to the purchase last year. There is a lady who makes the most wonderful handknit felted wool hats, and last year I had looked at them, but I walked away without purchasing the one I had my heart set on to "think about it." Of course, when I came back, it was long gone. This year, I took no such chances, and I have the best black hat to show for it.

The second half of my wonderful Saturday was an evening of ballet with my best friend and her mom and aunt. We went to see The Nutcracker. It wasn't the most fabulous production I've ever seen. They did a couple of things that really annoy me, the chief of which is to tinker with the music to "modernize it", but just getting a break to go to see ballet with my friend made it all wonderful. The parts of the production with the professional dancers were great. It made me nostalgic for the performances in Indiana. I miss being able to see ballet and opera on a regular basis just for the joy of seeing and hearing beautiful things, so this weekend was a rare treat for me.

The weekend has wound up being a short one because of all the extra things crammed into yesterday, but I really wouldn't have had it any other way. It's been a long time since I took any sort of even mini-trip like this to refresh myself. While I was in Jackson, I saw at least two other things there I want to go do during the holidays. Maybe my friend will be able to have some more time during her family's holiday schedule where her husband can keep her kids another day, and we can go take another culture day together. Even if we don't get to do it again, I'm so glad that we did this weekend. It's made all the difference in the world.