and blue

A post is a post is a post. This should count for something.

1. I blog better when I'm procrastinating something I ought to do. That would typically be grading.

2. I have the best friend anybody could ask for. She's been in Chicago all weekend loving on ner new nephew. I liked my own quiet time but missed her severely!

3. I have felt rich in knowing so many good people from so many times and places in my life. People from high school, from childhood, from college, from church, from friends of friends of friends. The world can never feel lonely.

4. I finished The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni this weekend. It was so lovely. I'm still deciding if the ending left me fully satisfied.


5. It has been about four years since I kissed anybody. This weekend I realized my last boyfriend (and I use the term loosely) and I had our falling out (read: came to the general concensus that we only liked making out with each other on his couch and had very little else in common) this month four years ago.

6. I feel quite relieved--still--about the mutual realization. The four years, however, equate to one heck of a dry spell.

7. I'm going to San Francisco a week from Friday with a few gal pals. Wicked and bridges and Alcatraz and ocean and fog. I cannot wait.

8. The sunrise this morning was golden and lovely. It took my breath away. I've never seen such a buttery-rich color. I felt blessed to be awake, driving to work in its perfection. Even if it is Monday.

9. I'm glad I'm the kind of girl who notices sunrises and sunsets and stars and the moon and the view from my 4th floor classroom.

10. I love scratching items off my to do list. I love making to do lists. I love writing in the little boxes on the calendar. I especially love ripping off a month on my desk calendar at work (forever erasing the spilled Diet Coke stain, the doodles, the things I've already accomplished). I love revealing the fresh month ahead.

11. It was the first day of Spring on Saturday. I'm in such a good mood, especially for a Monday. Coincidence? I think not.

12. Prep period is a blessed event. I don't know how elementary teachers live without them.

13. Of all my classes this year, my A-day first period 9th graders are my very favorite. They're quirky and sweet and oh-so-easy to manage. Shhh, don't tell them I like them so much.

14. I finally bought the purse that I kept coming back to again and again, admiring it. Visiting it. Telling myself each time, It is too expensive. I don't regret the expense one bit.

15. I had a birthday. I'm officially 29. It feels different now, however. When I was 8, I'd write the number over and over again, doodle its infinite design in the margins of my school notebooks. 8 felt amazing as did every age surrounding it. Each number felt so grand, so accomplished. Now, I forget when people ask my age--I have to think for a minute. My age now means so very little. I think there is a bittersweetness resting in that fact.

16. I think there's something beautiful about blowing out candles and making wishes. I wish I remembered every birthday wish I ever made.

17. I was a funny little kid with whimsical notions in my brain at all times. Sometimes, in my still rather whimsical thoughts, I'd like to observe my shy little self. To go back and see with my adult eyes who I was as a child.

18. I love breaking the grammar rules I feign knowing so well. Sentence fragments are our friends. Run-ons, however, will never sit well with me.

19. I taught the lesson in the adult Sunday School class yesterday. It was about Joseph, his brothers, his father, Potiphar, his wife. The musical score of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat has been in my head for days because of it.



20. When I was about 8, my mom bought a big knock-off Persian rug that filled the living room and an old record player with a few records of 70's pop artists like The Carpenters and Barry Manilow at a yard sale. I used to dance around the flowers on that rug listening to the Joseph Original Cast Recording record over and over.

21. Are you still reading this? Bless you. I've wasted a good 30 minutes of prep period and grading time writing it. I don't regret that at all. I hope you don't regret the time you spent reading it.

22. "It was red and yellow and green and brown and scarlet and black and ochre and peach and ruby and olive and violet and fawn and lilac and gold and chocolate and mauve and cream and crimson and silver and rose and azure and lemon and russet and grey and purple and white and pink and orange and blue."