Into the Wild Wood and Home Again

Saturday morning, and the house is quiet. The dog is snoozing. The pellet stove is ticking along, with a gentle hum and heat radiating to the rest of the room. I'm reaching the bottom of cup #1 of good coffee. This is the last quiet morning I'll have for a while, a week at least. And I am going to savor it.  I didn't end up starting a new book yesterday; house chores and Holly things kept me busy. I have selected Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower , though, partly because I need to find some good contemporary texts for AP Lit, but also the premise intrigues me. There's a lot of good discussion out there about the book, so I'll see what all the fuss is about. I'd seriously love it if I had an unlimited budget to add all the recommended texts to my bookshelves at school, but alas, I will only be able to add one or two at a time. I must choose wisely. And, to be honest, following the AP schedule, there's really only time for two, possibly three, novels i...

Friday. The last day of my "vacation." Which has, in no way, really been all that vacation-y, with the exception of being able to drink coffee in a civilized manner and not having to hit the shower at an ungodly hour. Things have gotten done, but nothing out of the ordinary, except getting the Passcard thing taken care of. See? I'm using really vague language: things. I am feeling pretty vague about this whole week of "vacation," too.  Okay, I did read and finish a whole 688-page book. I sent off a couple of poems for likely rejection. And, like I said, I've hung around in pjs every morning. And I'm going to start a new book today. I have to figure out some more contemporary fiction for AP Lit for next year-- a book or two that won't set off the neo-conservative fireworks. We'll see how that goes. Today, I will do a few house chores, hang out with Holly (as I have been all week), and think about a grocery list. We were going to go out to dinner t...

How is it that it's already Thursday? At least I can say I've read a bit, slept a bit, and have accomplished a few minor things this week. I've got a cheddar cheese quiche in the oven as I type this (and it's not yet 6:30 am), and I've got my trusty cup of coffee and bathrobe.  Yesterday, I went to the post office to get my Passcard renewed. Well, get a new one, since mine expired. That took about an hour for a ten minute job, but it got done. It seems that they don't do passport stuff often in our local post office, even though they are a designated place to do so. And who knew that it took a legally certified person to do it? And one of the two was on lunch? It took two nice ladies quite a bit of wrangling to figure out how to do the photo. Then one of them had me fill out a whole new set of forms (which I didn't need to do...sigh). Then, they had to find the other person who is legally able to process the form. Et cetera. Lucky for me, I had gotten a park...

Full disclosure: I didn't watch the SOTU last night. I turned on the baking show, and promptly fell asleep before 8pm. I woke up in my chair all sorts of irritated that I missed the ending of the season, and here I was, already launched into a new season. I went to bed. And I slept til almost 7am. I can't recall being this needful of sleep in a long time, but here we are.  Yes, here we are: 5 degrees and snowing. Again. It's really no surprise I'm tired. This winter is taking its toll on me.  You know what is not taking its toll? The dentist. I had a good (deep) cleaning yesterday, and I'm satisfied. I postponed getting new films done, because I have to pay for all of this out of pocket. Ouch. I then send the claim for to my insurance company, who will clearly reject it, because I don't have dental insurance. That, however, is how this stupid game gets played. Once I have the denial in hand, only then can I send it off to G's insurance, who will then reimbu...

I see online the devastation that the huge snowstorm has wrought. My elderly aunt is in Rhode Island, not far from the airport. I'm glad she's where she is instead of where she was just months ago; she and my uncle (who is in a VA facility now) sold their huge home in the woods of Exeter and she bought a far more manageable house in a populated area. But still-- I texted her yesterday, and she already had about three feet of snow. I'll check in on her later, too-- what a thing to have to deal with. She is disabled as well, so she won't be shoveling or anything, but I hope she didn't lose power. Likely, she did. The whole state seems devastated. This storm beat the Blizzard of 1978 by a mile.  That blizzard was the precursor to my family moving from Rhode Island to the middle of nowhere in Vermont; I guess it was basic training. We moved in June of 1978 to a hayfield, living in a four-man tent with a camping portable toilet (four of us) and an Econoline van until at ...

We had a decent day yesterday; pretty quiet, peaceful, and Holly and I had a good time. G had a day to himself, really, with some reading, napping, a little outdoor snow removal, but generally an unscripted day to do as he wished. Which turned out well: for the first time in 46 years, the US Men's Hockey Team won the gold medal at the Olympics-- which, for the record, was on G's birthday the last time, too, in 1980. We got to watch the whole game in our pjs. It was a great start to the day.  I watched Fr. Rory's homily on the livestream, too (the hockey game was on in the other room). It was another great homily, and it really made me think a lot. Part of his homily centered on the fact that the Fall in Eden is called Adam's Sin, not Eve's. That provided a lot of thought: why didn't Adam step in and help her not make a poor choice? I've often wondered about that. And the other part of the homily that really hit me was Fr. Rory's discussion about the natu...