After nearly an hour of intense prodding (physical as well as verbal and emotional, and paternally as well as maternally administered)  Parker dragged his bad-tempered, wild-haired, nonsense-spewing self out the door and schoolward.

He left behind an overturned coffeetable, clothing flung to all reaches, air-turned-blue with profanity, and a mother who has had more than enough of his self-indulgent rampages. 

He will return to an empty space where his computer now stands, a yanked-out-from-under-him allowance, and an absence of food cooked for him at dinnertime.  His mother knows from experience that none of this will change the scenerio tomorrow morning, but imposing consequences does help one tell  the mother from the doormat in the household.

Peace.

The first day back at work went very well I thought considering that every student in the school must have been confined to a small, dark closet and been fed nothing but caffiene and sugar for the entire eleven days they had off from school.  They'd been brainwashed too, apparently because they didn't remember ANY of the sensible civilized rules and customs that are part of school behavior.

Add to that a team of people who couldn't quite believe we were supposed to be back at work already and you had a rolicking roll through the midday at the school.  I am pleased and somewhat surprised, truth be told, that all arrived back in classrooms relatively on time and with no serious injuries.

Let's see how today will go, shall we?

It's pretty obvious I haven't been blogging here much.  I've been hanging around at that other place, hemming and hawing about a sticky situation.  The jury's still out about how things will work out, but I have reason today to believe that they will not stay the same.  I'm going to leave the whole thing over there and take a break from it by coming here.

The big news of the day is four or five inches of snow which has made the place look like Wisconsin in January.  I'm feeling somewhat apologetic for enjoying the white stuff, though.  We hear that places to the west, to the south, to the east, and to the north have been buried in freak snowfalls.  People have died, power goes out, people are found miraculously alive and understandably dead.  Here in the land of the Big Snows, however, the streets are clear to the pavement, and the snow is snowmen waiting to be built and snowball volleys waiting to be thrown.

Beautiful stuff indeed.

My niece turned sixteen the other day.  She and her brother and sister are living at home but their mother is not.  Their father is deceased and the usual approach of bringing them to live with me won't work this time around.  Their schools are too far away for me to be able to reliably get them there on time each day so we are trying a different approach.  I go to their house and make and have dinner with them there. 

On the girl's birthday that meant bringing birthday cake, ice cream, and presents as well as the ingredients for dinner.  Everything was going very well indeed;  there was even some festivity in the air despite their mother's absence.   Dinner over, it was time for the cake and making a wish and blowing out the candles when I realized that I hadn't thought to bring matches with me.   No problem, I thought.  The mother smokes.

And locks her bedroom, the matches and lighters within.

We'll do what I do when I'm out of matches at home, I reasoned.

At home I light a certain thing with the flame of the cooktop.  It works like a charm, though no one who has seen me do it has ever heard of doing it that way.  I asked the younger sister if they had what I needed and yes, in the ill-stocked cupboard the girl found a box with a few of the handy strands in it. 

I took one and went over to the stove and my heart sank.  Unlike my cooktop, which is gas, they have an electric stove.  Was all lost?  Were un-flame-topped candles going to scuttle the fun?  Were magic birthday wishes not to be granted through no fault of the birthday girl?  Would she ever forgive her addled auntie?

You may not know this, but I was a girl scout leader for many years and every time my little scouts and I were to make a fire, whether for camping or badge work, whether for cooking or ambiance, it rained.  We still had fires because when you need a fire you produce it.  And I came up with fire for the candle lighting, too.

Here's what to do if you ever find yourself in similar straits:  Open the poorly stocked cupboard nearby.  Find one piece of spaghetti.   Turn on the front burner on the electric stove and put the end of the noodle on the heating coil.  Don't wiggle it, don't fidget.  It will start sending up smoke and it will do that for longer than you think you can stand it.  You'll want to give up and eat the birthday cake and melting ice cream without the candle-blowing out part.    When you're just about to fall over from exhaustion, a tiny feeble flame will rise from the end of the pasta.  Don't get too excited or it will go out.  Take an extra candle and light it without taking the noodle off the coil.  Be careful not to drip wax on it--you won't want to have to clean the mess up.

Light those candles!   Sing that song!  Wish some wishes and blow the flames out so that the smoke from them carries your wish to benevolent spirits.  And don't forget to invite me to your next birthday do or campout.  I'm as brilliant as a lit-up sixteenth birthday cake, if not as sweet.

I think of this as a bundle of kindling.

I have today off of work and it's been just lovely to get up at my leisure and waste an hour playing spider on the computer while I drink  espresso made in that lovely little blue stovetop espresso burbler that seemed like such a foolish indulgence when I bought it (for something like $20) and which I have used at least three or four times a week since.

Yesterday Mack broke my coffeepot so the espresso brewer is just about my favorite thing in the kitchen, ranking right under the cooktop and that only being more important to me because I use it to heat up the espresso maker.

Can I waste the whole day this way brewing, sipping, and being clever with cards in a computer game?

Please?

If you know me at all, you know that I am skittery, easily spooked by scary movies, Odd Thomas books, and occasionally by Parker's friends.   Fifteen years with Parker has done a lot to thicken my skin and steel my nerves, but not enough to let me look at this picture and not be frightened.

Yeah.  For some reason I don't think I'd trust my health and well-being to Gabby.  It's just a hunch.

It's Anton Chekov's birthday today and if you think the fact that he's dead should keep me from celebrating it,  I disagree.  Just take a look at something he said. 

"Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out."

It's true, isn't it?  We can pull ourselves together and surmount the occasional disaster carried over through it by courage and by having others depend on us.  We may even feel the lift of satisfaction at what we accomplish.  But when it comes to the everymorning early rising, the everyday grouchy attitude of a coworker, the steady pressure of a child who persistently rebels and endangers himself, those leech our spirits without let-up.

What does Chekov teach me with his words?  I've thought about it today and he is reminding me to be sure to enjoy something every day.  It's easy to forget what it is that we thought was fun when we had enthusiasm for life.  Some joys such as a tall glass of icy Coke and a heap of salted french fries must be given up and I'd be kidding at least one of us if I thought every pleasure of one's young life could be indulged in during later years, but surely other treats and favorites should not be put down just because the day-to-day takes up so much of the day.