Thursday, April 2, 2009

A Lift of Spirits

In the short lifetime of this blog, I've discovered this problem: when life is dull, there's nothing to blog about and when life is busy, there's no time to write. And then there's the third situation -- when life is busy and there are things to do, and yet I am stuck at home waiting for the oven repairman. Yes, the oven saga continues, now entering its fourth week. We've had missing parts, wrong parts, parts that needed to be special ordered, overly busy repairmen, repairmen taking a sick day, and finally today a technician who says he will arrive here between 11 and 2. My confidence level in that actually happening is not high. In fact, tonight's dinner is already cooking in the crockpot. In these last few weeks, I've become an expert at slow cooker, grilled or skillet meals. Were it not for my longing for a homemade chocolate chip cookie, I could no doubt remain ovenless for a while longer. Which, with the time ticking away and my confidence dropping further, still may happen.

Apart from the economic gloom and doom discussed by Smash in her last post, I'm feeling fairly optimistic. I always prefer April to March. March is my least favorite month --long, gray, and usually cold with just enough days with a hint of warmth to remind us of what we're missing when the next day is back to cold and windy. I was glad yesterday to bid March goodbye. So there's one for the Joy Journal.

The last few weekends have been fun-filled. Smash was home to visit, an increasingly rare treat. I love all three of my girls, but it's nice when I can have time to visit with each one individually. I'm not saying that having them together isn't wonderful as well, but sometimes it seems as the one-on-one time brings out the more adult, reasonable side of each darling daughter, not a return to the sibling squabbles of previous decades.

March Madness is always a fun time as well. I am usually spot-on with my bracket choices, and take great pleasure in pointing that out to all family members around me who have not made such wise choices. This season has been an exception; my brackets are busted. I blame that on the dismal economy. Obviously my worry about the financial future clouded my prognostication ability. D is leading the pack in her pool of 25 sorority sisters; unfortunately she is the administrator of the pool and failed to collect each person's one dollar in advance. There will surely be a life lesson there -- always better to get the money up front.

This past weekend we attended D's sorority Parents Formal. This is our third Parents Formal, and each year has been more and more fun as we've gotten to know more parents. The girls themselves are so lovely -- there's little fault to be seen in a group of so pretty 18-21 year olds all dressed in great dresses and escorted by handsome tuxedo clad dates. It was interesting to me that in the 100 or so young men that were in attendance, I didn't see one tuxedo that looked as if it were a rental. Do all college boys have their own tuxedos? Surely wasn't the case in my day, but as the evening with the sorority certainly pointed out -- college for me was a LONG time ago. I spent a good part of the evening avoiding the roaming photographers. A sure fire way to look old and feel depressed is to view myself in a photo standing next to the dewy skinned coeds. Someone took a picture of D and me on my camera.... one glance and I hit delete with record speed!

Following the college visit, we continued on to North Carolina to visit with my dad who lives in an independent living facility. Perhaps that should always be my next step after a visit with the college set.... I'm the youthful guest with my dad's crowd! Those visits are always interesting; the group dynamics are fascinating. There are always squabbles in the works about who sits where in the dining room, who is visiting whom, and the parking wars are vicious! When I commented that it seemed an awfully lot like high school, Joe corrected me and said he thought it was more like junior high school. He's right.

This weekend we'll spend at home with the focus being on the big UNC game on Saturday night. The cherry blossoms are in bloom, but I'll see them on television. Those of us who live in the DC area are loathe to go downtown on this, the busiest of all the tourist weekends. Still, there are some trees beautifully in bloom in my own neighborhood, the weather forecast is for gorgeous weather, and as of five minutes ago, I have a working oven!!! Toll House cookies here I come! So, no gloom and doom for me. It's joy all around.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Can we get another april post? I am going to highjack this blog and make my "scoots" entry.