grateful for: only one more to go, and it's half done

I return with remarkable frequency on this blog to telling you, dear reader, what I have been eating. What I have been eating last night and today are doritos. You always know it's finals time when I eat doritos for meals (though last night they were rounded out by some salad and bagel bites). Today they were lunch.

But tonight I'm going to make a curried chickpea stew with rice and a cucumber salad, I bought a huge bag of grapefruits last weekend, so scurvy is at least not on the immediate horizon. And things promise to return to somewhat sane by noon tomorrow, which is the deadline I've given myself for finishing this last paper.

I'll let you know about that stew.

grateful for: a warm place

I just ate a bowl of popcorn and cheese that was probably twice the size of my head. Feeling pretty good.

The weather outside is beyond frightful...all I see are flakes and raindrops and bits of ice blowing in several different directions at the same time. But my radiators are clinking and, well, radiating, and I'm bouts to write a paper. So there.

grateful for: clean floors

I mopped.

I'm also feeling much better. Thanks for your prayers.

It's getting dark, and through the fogged windowpanes I can just make out the color difference between the gray-blue sky and the brick wall across the courtyard. Everyone else must be out--none of the neighbors have lights on. But Josh and I are home. I'm typing up research notes for paper no. 2 of 3 (no. 1 is still on the docket for major expansion/revision), and he's in the dining room writing a sermon. And our floors our clean.

grateful for: the stillness that comes with sickness

I went to bed Sunday night exhausted but feeling pretty fine, but I woke Monday morning with a ragingly sore throat/head/neck/back/everything. So I spent Monday and Tuesday cancelling out of everything and sitting/lying on the couch. I tried to do work, but mostly I slept and watched Anne of Green Gables and drank tea and pomegranate 7-up (does anyone else have an aversion to water when they're sick?).

This is, of course, the worst time to get sick. It's finals season and holiday time, which means that not only do I have three major papers to research and write, last classes to attend, and a very busy writing center to staff, but also that I don't want to be doing any of these things because I want to be elaborately decorating snowflake sugar cookies, stitching ridiculous felt ornaments, cutting and gluing cards to send far away, and sipping spiced cider with a room full of friends reading poetry aloud or playing mildly nerdy board games. Plus chocolate cake.

But I was reminded of the blessing of this wicked virus yesterday evening, as I became aware of myself sprawled on the couch with a soft blanket, doing nothing. I could see snow on the windowsill across the alley, hear the radiators hissing, feel the couch's imprint on my cheek. Josh would be on his way home soon, and I'd have chatter and dinner to pull me back into activity, but for the moment, I was still, without a single task or distraction or scrap of text in front of me. And in that stillness, I remembered that it was advent, and I even thought to pray.

grateful for: friends

Friends show up and do all the work, believe in the projects, listen to the musings, make dreams, run the projectors, play the instruments, clean up exploded coffee makers, drive 40 miles, love love love.