The Past Two (Lazy, Indoor) Weeks

Well, I highly recommend kicking off a new year by conquering one's fears and achieving something that's been on the To-Do list for ages.  It's infused the past two weeks with significantly more lightness and dance-around-the-apartment-to-my-favorite-songs JOY than I usually feel in January and February, for sure.  In the spirit of celebration last week, I treated Stuffed to a comfy new cat bed--and he's actually been curled up in it, wonder of wonders--and a catnip ball, and I gave Mike an amazon gift card.  We can all use some extra fun here in these weeks of day-after-day of forehead-freezing wind and back-wrenchingly slippery sidewalks.  I got my taxes done this week.  And filled out some student loan paperwork that had been on my to-do list too long.  And got another box of books and book characters ready to mail to the school.  And worked at my job, of course.  Otherwise, I have been lazily cuddled up with an afghan more often than not:  reading stretched out in bed, reading in my chair with my feet tucked under me, or refilling glass-after-glass of chocolate almond milk, hot chocolate, or iced tea while making my way through the episodes of "The West Wing" that I missed when it was still on TV.  In short, aside from a few must-do duties, I've spent the past two weeks vegging out, and it's been lovely.  I treated myself to the dvd of the first season of "Downton Abbey"--I've only ever seen some the first episode--and plan to relax with that sometime soon, as well.  Eleanor Roosevelt's book You Learn By Living is brilliant.  I admire her so, especially for her managing her shyness so beautifully.  I have only a few pages left in J.K. Rowling's The Silkworm, Steve Berry's The Lincoln Myth, and Steven Rigolosi's The Outsmarting of Criminals:  A Mystery Introducing Miss Felicity Prim.  I've been skipping around in Frances Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun--one of your favorite books, Lisa, I know!--since around Thanksgiving, probably.  I'm a fast reader, but I like just reading a section or so of that book and waiting awhile to dip back into it.  It is a soothing read, with some of the most beautiful writing.  Patti Smith's Just Kids has been hauntingly beautiful too.  And "Mrs. Mimi's" teaching memoir, It's Not All Flowers and Sausages:  My Adventures in Second Grade, along with Searching for a Savior:  The Trials and Triumphs of a First-Year Teacher, because I've never been able to shake the idea of giving a teaching career a second go.  (I taught two months of middle school when I was twenty-four.)  We'll see.  For now, I'm reading and watching and thinking and daydreaming:  teaching kindergarteners how to read, solving mysteries with Cormoran Strike and other detectives who need my expertise, assisting Josh and Donna at the White House, falling asleep while an owl watches over me from my bedroom windowsill in Tuscany, discussing shyness and fear-conquering and driver's license-acquiring with Mrs. Roosevelt. . . .The rest of me continually re-wraps itself into a blanket, only getting up to pour another drink or to feed the cat, but my head--Well!  My head and I, we're GOING places, I tell you.  :)

Sore Throats, Shy Eleanor, and Snow

 
'Have been over the flu less than two weeks and am sick again. A child in my care at work spent yesterday coughing into my neck and shoulder, and I could see my own next bout of sickness coming as surely as my mom used to call me "Typhoid Mary." While Mike has caught up on laundry and whatever else, I've spent most of today and tonight in bed with a book under piles of blankets and quilts beside the space heater.  

I've been reading Joseph Lash's Eleanor and Franklin and grrr-ing over Eleanor Roosevelt's mother's calling her "Granny" as a child due to her plain face and somber manner. Mike has heard my intermittent rants today about how photos of a young Eleanor Roosevelt show a pretty little girl, not at all what I'd consider plain, but regardless, what a rotten thing to make a child believe about herself. And if I had been Eleanor's mom--Eleanor would not have become the Eleanor she became, so it's all good in the end, I KNOW, but--I'd have been kind to her and let her be quiet and thoughtful, if that's what she was, and I'd have helped to build her up and make her feel more secure and not dragged her out in front of company only to refer to her mockingly as "Granny" and reinforce her shyness and thus make her feel even more awkward and ill-at-ease around others. And some people--too many people--have children because they wish to raise new/tiny versions of themselves as kids, and when their children surprise them by being quite different than they are and very much their own people--e.g., an earnest little Eleanor being raised by her outgoing socialite mother--they don't handle it well. Oh, Mike's gotten an earful today. He is probably hoping loss of voice will soon follow my sore throat. But look at her!
 
"Granny," my foot. Grrrrr.  Would you like to sit with me awhile, Eleanor? I don't want to be out there with those women as they chatter about dresses and dinners and debutante balls either. We'll read quietly and play with my cat. Look, he likes you! You're so good with him! How wise you are to care about living things so deeply and to listen to them so closely! And you watch the world with such gorgeous expressive eyes! You know, your mama is good in all kinds of ways, I'm sure, but she doesn't know everything. You, sweet girl, are destined for wonderful things.
 
The world outside my book is beautiful today. The city is coated with maybe three inches of snow, just enough to pretty it up.


 
Back to bed.