5/31: playing
...a new-to-me card game with Chris: Five Crowns. I have a few favorite card games: Skip-Bo, Quiddler, and a form of contract rummy that we called "Schnitzel" growing up (but that isn't what other people call Schnitzel). I was looking for a new game and searched for reviews online. Five Crowns came up as a possible good match. It has some aspects of Quiddler (though not with words) and some aspects of contract rummy, so it fits in the family, but it's also it's own thing, and I'll look forward to playing it some more.
5/30: a Daphne
...who is transformed not by her river-god father but by Gaia, the earth. Gaia as fairy-godmother? Also worthy of different punctuation: Gaia as fairy-godmother! (This version is in Tales of Brave and Brilliant Girls from the Greek Myths by Zanna Davidson and Rosie Dickins.)
5/28: opting out
...of a summer work commitment that wasn't going to be good for me. It was good that I thought it was something that I wanted to do when I signed up for it, and it was also good that I realized today that it would be better to bow out.
5/27: helping
...Chris replace some parts in my toilet tank. He knew what he was doing, so he did more than I did, but I learned. I also contributed to the cause by finding a big syringe we had that made it easier to remove the water at the bottom of the tank.
5/26: collaging
...at the end of the day as a way to (try to) let go of some bureaucratic frustration.
5/25: having thoughts
...about Sappho, about Clytie, about Pegasus and Bellerophon. Of course I have thoughts throughout the school year, as I'm preparing for and teaching my classes. But it's different to have ideas more on my own schedule and less directly connected to courses.
5/24: hearing
...a whippoorwill. Chris was sitting on the porch and came to get me when he heard it. It was loud and close and made me happy.
5/23: Sappho & Clytie
This morning I was thinking about Anya Leonard's Sappho: The Lost Poetess, a picturebook presentation of Sappho that is intriguingly problematic. I kind of can't stop thinking about it, as if it's a puzzle I need to solve.
This evening I tracked down the textual source for a recording of the story of Clytie that I loved as a child; it's from Flora J. Cooke's expanded (1919/1922) edition of Nature Myths and Stories. (The story was included, without citation, on a Disney record narrated by Rica Moore, which I wrote about back in September 2017.)
5/22: on their way home
There's only an hour and a half left in the day, but before it ends Chris and Tilde will be back from the after-hours animal clinic in Little Rock. (It sounds like tests show that Tilde has a UTI, so of all the things it could have been, that seems manageable.)
5/21: driving
...to Little Rock this morning to drop a friend off at the airport. It's not far (40 miles each way), but these days I rarely do more than drive around town, so it felt good to be on the road.
5/20: finding
...a small Lego block that was missing from Celery, a Lego horse I found years ago, abandoned in a parking lot. Celery now lives in my car, and somehow the small piece got knocked out. I must have found it in the past and put it in a "I'll put it here so I don't forget it" place, and then I forgot it.
5/19: mending
...a library book that came apart in my hands. I could tell that it had already been mended once but with a kind of glue that didn't bond with the paper, so it just popped apart. I'm hoping that my fix lasts longer.
5/18: reformatting
...my cv. It's been in need of an overhaul--for a cleaner look--for quite some time. And now it has one.
5/17: Emma the Cat
...grooming Simon the Cat. Simon is not-entirely-tame and sometimes isn't very nice to Emma. Emma was nice to him anyway.
5/15: filing
...the last of the grades. Though I finished the grading last night, I wanted to pause and be sure before making them official.
5/13: another day
...that included online lecture opportunities. Yesterday I Zoomed a lecture on John Gabriel Stedman's use of Andromache in his account of his time in Suriname. Today I attended a webinar on Greek and Roman myth.
5/12: seeing
...a deer in our woods. Chris spotted it through our bedroom window and called to me so I could see it too.
5/11: waiting
...until today to write some emails. Though it meant putting them off last week, I didn't want to write when rushed and scattered. This evening I was more collected, and that allowed me to focus on choosing my words and making connections to the people I was writing to.
5/10: a handful
...of berries gathered at the end of my morning walk. There won't be as many this year as last year, so a handful seemed like bounty.
5/7: reading
...Mac Barnett's Make Believe: On Telling Stories to Children and then Runaway Bunny and The Indoor Noisy Book by Margaret Wise Brown.
5/6: devising
...the final writing prompts for the Myths & Picturebooks class. I like the way I decided to list and divvy up possible things for them to focus on.
5/5: again trying to be okay
...about speaking up in a committee meeting, even though I was bringing up substantive issues that weren't necessarily welcome.
5/4: trying to be okay
...about standing up for myself when I had scheduled a room and people who hadn't scheduled it were using it.
5/2: doing
...some necessary end-of-semester work, and feeling like I've made some progress with it.
4/30: a good conversation
...in the final Myth class of the semester about what Ovid's Metamorphoses emphasizes about the world, humans, human life, and its challenges.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)