Light and Momentary

Opting out

Today was the Alpha retreat. I was a little worried about spending a whole Saturday away. Saturdays are a little nuts around here, and this Saturday I had a bunch of grading to do. I promised my students it would be done by 8:00 Monday morning, and I do not grade on Sundays for any reason, at all, ever.

I spent the day beside a lake that glinted in the autumn sunshine. I saw a heron at the edge of the water, shaded by golden leaves. It was a lovely mix of structured stuff -- talks and discussion and prayer -- and unstructured time. I was part of the women's prayer team, and it was delightful and invigorating. I came home a little earlier than expected and finished the grading, fueled by holy joy. I didn't get the kitchen floor mopped this week, but I'm okay with that.

I think if I had spent the day in my usual Saturday groove I would have wasted a lot of mental energy on Facebook wrath. Maybe I should just stay away from Facebook altogether until the election is over. I can't spend every day watching herons and basking in autumn sunshine, but I can dial back the crazy a little bit.

Impossible Things

The White Queen told Alice that she had believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. I think a more widely useful discipline might be to figure out which things you've been believing are actually impossible.

I heard the Trump news from Bearing's Twitter feed, and immediately I started seeing comments that supported her prediction. "It's because he didn't have any spiritual influences in his life in 2005," said Pastor Darrell Scott. But here's the thing: think about the woman at the well and St. Paul and the woman with the jar of nard and St. Peter. Know what they didn't say? They didn't say "I'm sorry if you're offended," the preposterous non-apology offered up the Republican presidential candidate. 

Could Donald Trump possibly govern the US? I think even the White Queen would balk at that idea.

In my mailbox

From the committee: "Because of your excellent record in teaching, scholarship, and service, we believe that you are making satisfactory progress toward promotion and tenure."

Phew. Onward.

Yarn & yarns

I'm making a hat with the newest pattern from Ysolda's Knitworthy collection. The idea is that they're suitable for Christmas gifts, but this one is probably for me. Two years ago I bought some extra yarn for a Knitworthy cowl pattern, thinking I'd make mittens or a hat or something to go along with it. When she included an Aran-weight hat in this year's collection, I cast on with the cowl leftovers.

It's the most fabulous color, called Autumn. From a distance it looks like an ordinary golden brown, but up close it's flecked with fiery orange and leafy green. It's an angular cable on a moss stitch background. I keep thinking I'm almost done but cables are always slower than I think they ought to be. I'm not even knitting the adult cable pattern; I'm doing the smaller child's cable over the adult number of background stitches -- on a larger needle, because I have an extra-large head topped with extra-large hair.

I didn't make a purposeful choice to do the child's cable -- I just started on the wrong page accidentally. But I think it was a good decision. The adult version is described as "slouchy," but in the pictures it doesn't really seem to slouch. It looks more like jutting than slouching to me. I fear that if I made the adult version I would look like Jane Curtin in a fetching shade of Shetland wool.

I bought Passage for my Kindle and checked a book of Connie Willis short stories out of the library. I want to be sure to blog about Blackout/All Clear while the memories are fresh, but this is not the night for that post. 

My reading with Stella has been scattered and desultory. My Father's Dragon DISAPPEARED somehow when we were just a few chapters from the end of the third book. It will turn up -- they always do -- but in the meantime I have been reluctant to start a new chapter book. Harrumph.

More Yarn Along posts at Ginny's.

Finished

"Mom," said Stella, when I told her I'd read to her when I finished my All Clear chapter, "it seems like these books have changed your life." (I know that sounds like a weird thing for a 7-year-old to say, but that is exactly what she said.) She said, "You want to read them all the time."

Oh my goodness, I could not have enjoyed these books any more. I loved Blackout and All Clear even more than Doomsday Book -- which was one of the best books I read this year. The books are a fantastic rendering of a world in which love conquers much and there are time travelers but no smartphones. Who could ask for anything more?

Dating Advice

Last night I wrote a speedy post because I wanted to read more Blackout, and tonight I am writing a speedy post because I am reading All Clear. SO good. I did not realize I was signing up for >1100 pages of the Oxford time travel universe when I decided to dive into the books, though -- I think that my job will interfere with my finishing the story as quickly as I might like to. Quick thought to share--

Recently my husband and I were driving somewhere together when another driver made an unsafe left turn right in front of us. In unison, with identical inflections, we said, "Whoa!" -- and then laughed about how we are turning into each other.

Tonight at dinner we were talking about books when Petely asked if he should read Paradise Lost. In unison, with identical inflections, Elwood and I said, "Paradise Lost is awesome." 

When I was young, deciding what kind of person I might like to marry, I thought I needed to find someone I could imagine spending the rest of my life with. I didn't realize it at the time, but I actually needed to find someone I was willing to turn into.

--and now, back to WWII London!

Division of Labor

I am not the math parent: the teenagers have stopped asking me math questions. "Where's Dad?" they say. I bristle a little at this. I can still hack it when they're in calculus, or at least sometimes I can. I get a little wobblier when they get into integration. (And I admit that the math major needs to go straight to Elwood.)

I did not expect to be the anatomy parent. "Should I be worried that my floating ribs are hurting?" asks one teenager. "How did you learn so much about teeth?" asks another, as I peer in his mouth with a flashlight to figure out whether we need to go to the dentist about the baby tooth that came out in two pieces and left a bulging gobbet of gum behind. I am a total slacker failure as Tooth Fairy, so much so that the kids just roll their eyes and ask if I will give them the money directly instead of slipping upstairs sheepishly to slip it inside a pillow case. But BY GUM (see what I did there?) I can tell you the name of the tooth that our loafer Tooth Fairy left behind for the third night in a row.