dual personalities

How was your weekend? Did you have a nice Valentine’s Day?

I asked my valentine for a new shower head and my husband went out and bought one for me. I was pleased. He had to buy a special wrench as well (par for the course) but he installed it with a minimum of cursing.

Later in the weekend I found a box with old cards in it. Some were Valentines. This one from the Green Tiger Press

was sent to my one-year-old daughter #1 by her aunt, my dual personality, who was a first year doctoral student living in a dorm at Yale at the time.  She wrote a long note inside. Here is a wee bit of that note:

Well, sweetie-poops, I have to make this short because I need to mail it and then take a nap. My neighbors kept me awake last night with their talking and I had to get up really early to do my Hittite and Akkadian, so I am tired. Otherwise, I’m doing okay and working hard and eating right and learning French and thinking about you all the time!

Isn’t that a riot? It was fun to go through all the cards and read what my friends wrote back in the day when our children were tiny and we were young and lighthearted.

I saw Inside Llewyn Davis. I really liked it. I thought Oscar Isaac was excellent. I had been listening to the soundtrack all week and so I was well prepared for the music to be great. But the film is more than just the music. And I liked the marmalade cat a lot. It made me want another Cat. But I am allergic, so that won’t happen. Sigh. Of course, the movie wasn’t nominated for Best Picture and Oscar got no Oscar nod. Typical.

I went to a couple of estate sales, but didn’t get anything except a few odd books.

I have been reading Missouri Bittersweet by MacKinlay Kantor and it is wonderful. I had no idea Kantor, whom I have always admired as a novelist, was such a fan of my flyover state. He and his wife revisited many small towns and counties in order to write this book and there is a lot of interesting stuff about the fascinating people who have lived in this state, such as Jesse James, Mark Twain and Daniel Boone, and also the regular people who still do.  It was published in 1969.

I was the Intercessor at church Sunday morning. In the Prayers of the People we always pray for the diocese of Lui in the Sudan and some of those African names can be a challenging mouthful, but I managed to stumble over “Albert”. Sometimes my brain just freezes. But afterwards the associate rector complimented me on my reading of the names on the prayer request list. I gather I kept the pace up nicely. Well, compliments are always appreciated.

And the amaryllis finally bloomed!

It seemed like it took forever and they still haven’t quite burst forth completely.  Our patience has been tested! They are indeed a welcome sight in the midst of our arctic winter–as are all our green friends which I move around the house to sunny spots.

A sunny window at home

Have a good week!

* from “A Glimpse” by Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892)