Quick Takes without Complaints

1. After all my moaning yesterday, my sixth grader place 2nd in the physics category of the science fair! A minor miracle! I’m sure it is not because he earned extra points on creativity and neatness, but because he gave a good presentation to the judges, since he knew what he had done.



2. Daffodils are blooming! The end of drear February is near. Welcome spring! I don’t see a lot of bulbs coming up around here; they must not do as well with the short winters as they do up in the north, where the first daffodils arrive around the end of March or so. But these few blooming around the entrance of the library are a welcome harbinger.

3. Completed and filed taxes and now am planning what to do with the money the government pays me to have children in the form of the child tax credit, if Mr. IRS doesn’t announce an audit…



4. When I passed a house under construction on my run with the lab today, a construction worker called out “Beautiful Day!” Another said, “Beautiful dog!” Beautiful indeed. And beautiful work they were doing! Spring sunshine makes everything seem a little prettier.



5. Books in the mail! My father in law sent some thrillers to pass the time with, and my new old copy of Caryll Houselander’s Way of the Cross arrived from some Benedictines’ library, providentially. It begins with reflections like this:
                 "The Stations of the Cross are not given to us only to remind us of the historical Passion of Christ but to show us what is happening now, and happening to each one of us."

                      and "Each one meets himself on the Via Crucis, which is the road through death to life. In Christ he finds the meaning of his own suffering, the power of his own capacity for love. . . . The stations show us how each one can lighten the heavy cross that is laid upon the bent back of the whole human race now, how each one in the power of Christ's love can sweeten his own suffering and that of those around him."

Thanks for the recommendation, Anne.



6. A letter, a letter, I love a love letter! I love seeing my name written by my husband’s hand. Emails are for business and spies, phone calls are for catching up and feeling distant, but letters are a physical presence, transcenders of time when they take 20 days to arrive, tangible joys to be revisited.



7. I got a hair cut I like, and it was free! My mom trimmed it up while she was here.

Welcome, weekend!

Thanks, Jen, for hosting.