No News Is Good News?; or, The Importance of Being Earnest Redux

Dear reader, dear friend, thank you for stopping by. I'm always glad to see you, I truly am. Your kindness is a very good thing. I hope you are doing well!

I've been away from blogging longer than I had anticipated. The end of the semester, with all its density of work (the end of the semester marking one year of graduate work, dear reader-who would have thought it?!?); the sisyphean feat of arranging with the very large and removed and oftimes disorganized main campus of my university for student teaching placement in my current classroom after the new year; the concurrent application process for the possible teaching position I've written about in my last post; and a bout of head and sinus cold followed in quick sucession by a virulent stomach virus first visited upon LG, BG, and then myself: all of these things have made the days go by very quickly. And of course, the cooking, the cleaning, the laundry...

It seems, in some aspect, as if we've just visited together yesterday; it seems, in yet another, that it's been a great long while.

Truthfully, dear reader, I'm tired. I feel as if the past battered-girl-slut-bitch-nobody and the future happy-girl-boddhisattva-somebody are coming together in some confluence: high and low pressures creating one terrific storm.

There has been no news of the position. No news is good news, as they say.
I've always practiced the thinking and belief that the classroom that is meant to be will present itself to me. I'll continue to think about that.

Today was Rosegold's birthday party. It was a very nice party. R's parents are gracious and convivial hosts. It was a lovely thing to go and laugh and not worry about having to take care of anyone or anything.
R's parents grew up in a different country. As I was leaving their home, R's mother made certain to approach the door and open it in a certain way.
A custom in our country, she said, to make certain that you return again.

Thank you again for stopping by, dear reader. I'll do my best to follow my dear friends' example. I may be Rosegold's teacher, but I am also a student: R and family are most excellent teachers.
Take good care. I'll talk with you soon.


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There's a Bakery Past the White-washed Pooh; or, A Short Post

http://www.mcgeeproductions.com/art.html

Tonight I was driving home from university.
I passed a commercial bakery, and smelled a yeasty, dense, slightly chemical smell, as if I were the proverbial Princess of the Pea , sitting on a pile of mattresses---if the mattresses were all plastic sacks filled with spongy white-bread hot dog buns.
It made me laugh.

I laughed imagining myself as such a princess; I laughed imagining that the bread starter making its way in the mail from Bee and Jai must smell so differently, so elemental and alive in its fermentation.
It's funny to me how things dance together, as if they are so much dough and freshly ground spices, dry fruits soaked to swollen, rising up in the heat of the oven: absolutely delicious, absolutely worth passing around to share.
Don't you think?

This Is the Good Stuff; or, I Go Dancing In (Thanks, Peter Gabriel)

It seems a long week to me this week, dear reader.

I'm looking forward to the weekend; I'm looking forward to visiting those of you who have your own blogs.

Keep the light on for me, okay?

Coming to the end of the first week of school and of the fall semester of grad school, I'm thinking so much of all the good stuff we managed to wring out of the last week of summer.

Come and remember with me.

LG and I went peach-picking with Vermillion and his parents.

Snowy and I enjoyed being outside in the backyard with our kiddos running about.

LG picked apples in our apple tree, from the vantage point of the "raft" that he and BG had built. See the red Crocs?

BG, being a Very Tall Person, did not need the vantage point of the raft in order to pick apples.

We went to the river. See BG, wearing a white shirt, searching for crayfish?

LG and Snowy climb a Very Big Hill at the river together. Here they are at the top.

See Snowy in an orangey shirt and LG in a light blue one? They've reached the top! They are about to come full-speed-ahead, running back down.

I love to think about these things when I'm tired, and wondering if I'm just spinning my wheels.

It helps put things in perspective for me.

What does it for you, dear reader?

A Private Showing; or, Out and About

Today we all went to see Mr. Bean's Holiday. Choosing to attend the early matinee, we had the entire movie theater to ourselves, something we enjoyed immensely.
The movie is perfectly beautiful, and beautifully happy. The ending was perfectly wonderful, and in what is becoming more and more my usual fashion, I got a little teary-eyed with happiness.

What a wonderful thing to laugh out loud, dear reader.
You know what I mean?