Yesterday was January 8, 2008.
Here in Syracuse, NY, it was 70 degrees.
If you live in Florida or California, or even, say, North Carolina, you may not realize what a big deal that is.
A week ago our temperatures were in the single digits with windchill below zero.
We got our first snow in November, and although some melted here and there, on and off, there was snow on the ground straight through until yesterday. I know this because we have a silver maple in our backyard, and it did not lose its leaves until the first week in December, when there was already quite a bit of snow on the ground. Then we got more snow. When we would go out to shovel paths for the dogs, we turned up a lot of leaves with the snow. Of course, for a neurotic like me, this was quite troubling. I comforted myself, saying, “When the January thaw comes, I will take care of those leaves.” Then, as the temperatures dropped lower and lower, I tried harder and harder not to worry.
About a week ago, on the coldest day of all, a new front door was delivered to our garage. Shawn had to park his car on the driveway to make room for it, which was an unhappy thing for him on those cold, cold days. I was quite concerned about how the installation of this front door would be carried out, and where I would go and what I would do with a huge hole in the front of my house on a frigid day, watching the snow blow in on the bitter wind.
Well, yesterday it was 70. I raked the yard, and they put in the front door. It was beautiful. I also did laundry, changed beds, baked two pies (Dutch apple and pecan), and walked the dogs. This was before we went to a huge concert featuring all our school’s bands, orchestras and choruses, held on the Syracuse University campus.
You know what? I was tired yesterday at midnight when I went to bed.
So today I am being lazy, and anyway my eye hurts and it’s giving me a headache. I have been seeing a little, tiny, jagged, dark spot (kind of like a crumpled up scrap of black construction paper) float past my left eye and down, off to the right. This has been going on for weeks, but I just started getting headaches from it.
Another thing—I am wondering and praying about whether I should go back to college and get a degree to be a high school English teacher. I am so old. And my fibromyalgia is pretty limiting. We have kids whose college we need to pay for. Is this a wise thing, or a foolish thing? I feel like the Lord may be calling me to do this; perhaps He has a mission for me out there in the public schools. On the other hand, I am tired (headachy, anyway) and scared and reluctant to spend money on something I may not have the stamina to carry through.
With a scattered blog post like this, why would I think I could teach English to anyone? If I were teaching English, I would not be available to clean up the leaves in the yard on a warm Tuesday in January.
4 comments:
personally, I really think that scattered blogs such as this one tend to show off one's writing better than a focused, to-the-point blog. for me, anyway.
as an aside: did you know I read somewhere that "their" can be used as a singular possessive? I was very confused by this. you will have to straighten me out. I read that it was historically used as a singular possessive (which doesn't make any sense at all to me, because I wasn't aware of anyone being particularly concerned about gender equality back in the olde Englishe times), but that people use it nowadays because they don't like to use the very useful British "one" because it sounds pretentious.
I like sounding pretentious.
Well, the one thing I do know is that to be correct, one should begin one's sentences with capital letters. :)
"One" cannot replace "their" because "one" is not possesive and "their" is... as in, "They ate their pie," but if, "One ate their pie," it is distinctly someone other than they. One may eat one's own pie, of course.
I do not believe for a minute that "their" ever stood in for "his" in the olde English singular form. To say such a thing is on a level with teaching that Thanksgiving was when the pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for helping them survive when we really know that, in truth, they were thanking GOD. People these days rewrite history to suit their every whim and fancy. It's quite terrifying, really.
Get that eye checked! An aquaintence at out church just had eye surgery for a partialy detached retina. Better to be safe than sorry!
oh Mom. don't you know it's cute to type with no capital letters?! I just can't bear to leave proper nouns without capitals, which I suppose kind of destroys the whole idea.
Post a Comment