Hold on--something's oddly familiar here.....
Great Scott!! This is MY blog!
I feel a bit like Mole stumbling upon his own sweet home after staying with Rat for a good long while. Life has been so full I've barely had time to reflect, much less keep a record.
But here we are, mid-October, at the end of midterm week. Friday night, the beginning of my schoolwork-sabbath. A lull. Big tests: taken; big papers: written; long reading: accomplished. A few tasks upcoming but nothing crushing. For a spell.
In celebration of my Gobs of Free Time, and in backlash against the orderly studies I've undertaken, here are a number of Reports and Reflections presented in as random an order as I can summon:
- Mashed sweet potatoes make a great side dish, and not only for one's diabetic husband.
- Luke and Ben play cooperative Borderlands whenever they get the chance, and have a lot of fun. Only a few years ago these two were barely speaking. Progress and blessing. God is good.
- I'm on the till four days a week now at Einstein Bros. Bagels, and I'm happy. Though there's a certain level of energy I must maintain, that "service presence", I've lost nearly all my fear of people in such encounters.
- The animated Avatar series is excellent, terrific. Highly recommend.
- I wrote a fiction exercise and a full short story for class set in, respectively, St Kilda and the Palouse Falls.
- Finally got my Idaho driver's license this week! Had to take the written test the learners take. Almost failed it.
- Our Latah County Credit Union debit cards have pictures of barns on them.
- Sunday is my fifty-second birthday. Many thanks to my parents.
- Sunday is also the first of four concerts the Palouse Choral Society will give this school year.We are a group of 50-70 people (many 50-70 years old, but there're younger folks too) directed by Prof. Michael Murphy, who also directs choirs here at the University and is just top-notch. I'm excited to get to sing with them. Hard work! This concert is "Music of the British Isles."
- Stumbled on a 13-hour Candy Sale at Roseaur's Market. Oops.
- Luke's bike-broke elbow is healing fast. Whew. More blessings and thanks.
- Mi clase de espanol es muy dificil, pero interesante.
- Every Single Time I pray for needed help I get it. Whether for wakefulness and focus, for relief or comfort, for material needs, insight, patience or strength, it's there.
- Jessamyn is a faithful and patient baby- and puppy-sitter.
- Gobbling cotton candy at the county fair was deeply satisfying, but even more so was the opportunity to play net-the-rubber-duckies at the arcade and win squiddy mitre-hats for Ben and Luke.
- I could say I have learned to survive on short nights, iced caramel mochas, hours of reading and study and longer hours of intense writing, but that wouldn't be quite the truth. Actually...
- I thrive on them.
- Which is a big surprise, after years of consciously leading a slow-paced life holding lots of time for reflection, playing with my tots, finding open space for the soul and all. I am loving this life, in a way I could never manage as a young student, always afraid I was in over my head.
- This week I set my Sunbox up on my desk and started using it for 20 minutes or so every evening. And the refrigerator now holds my cider mug loaded with cloves and a cinnamon stick which I re-use. I'm wearing the fingerless gloves Roo made me, to type in. Autumn.
- Two weeks ago All Souls Christian Church held an indoor painting party, followed by a first-rate pot roast supper a couple of the sexy church ladies cooked while the rest of us painted. Painting was fun (Sable brown for the trim. I nearly got stuck on top of a ledge I'd just coated) and dinner was sublime.
- Our two cars are on the fritz, so we are getting around in Leon's old truck. This situation does not favor popping down to Newberg for the odd weekend, but I find I'm content.
- I like being so studied-up for an essay exam in Shakespeare that I'm sorry the professor didn't ask more questions, because I'd been looking forward to, say, writing about Feste's character in Twelfth Night and the purpose he serves in the story.
- Last year on campus, we got around on foot nearly all the time. This year we are bikers. It is so so lovely and thrilling to whip home from my Spanish class in under two minutes, downhill all the way from the Admin building on its imposing wooded hill. To heft my backpack indoors only from class to class and never to schlepp it all the way from home. I love my bike basket and I love my bike.
- This is the only reason I do not look forward to the snow.
- Jess and I are going to feast our eyes and rot our brains watching Merlin now, I think.
