January 27, 1965
Spanish I finished in 55 minutes. It was a real dud. I got an A- on that easily. I took along a book called "Un Pueblo Mexicano" to read when I finished. It turned out to be written in Spanish - with alot of the vocab. from our test in it. I didn't cheat, though. It sure felt nice to get home early for a change. Ah! Mid-years are over.
January 27, 2006
How typical. I use to grab something to read as I left the house, not thinking over the choice at all. This was evidently one of my dad's books from the time he was a high school Spanish teacher.
Every house we ever lived in either had built-in bookcases when we moved in, or had them by the time we left. As a printer's son and grandson, and an editor/printer himself, he loved to read and own books. By the 1960s, they filled one entire wall in our living room. As a teenager living in a rural subdivision with no personal transportation, I pretty much read my way through most of them. Frankly, most were mediocre, though he also owned some classics that became favorites, such as his complete collection of Sherlock Holmes, the Bounty trilogy and the Rockwell-illustrated Tom Sawyer.
And no, I really didn't cheat on the test. By high school, my cheating days were long past, though still a dark source of secret shame. In fifth grade, I use to wait until everyone else went to lunch and then find my spelling test on the teacher's desk and correct any words I got wrong. Never got caught.
January 27, 1983
Maria has weaned herself in the last month. Yesterday she didn’t nurse at all — most days it was just once a day, recently. ON the one hand, it’s sad, because (a) I enjoyed it and (b) it’s a sign that she’s growing less dependent on my. But, as we keep saying, sometimes between now and when she turns 18… She’s a really nice baby, but I expect she’ll also be a nice toddler, a nice little girls and a nice young woman. Maybe even a nice old lady, but I wonder how much I am responsible for that!
Yesterday I got quite a bit done, by working on diddly things when she was awake and writing while she was napping. She’s harder to keep amused, and requires more watching now. Between crawling and pulling herself up the nearest vertical surface, she can get into trouble a lot quicker. Well, time to move on to work!
January 27, 1997
Sarah talked today about the value of the journal as a place to sort out problems. While at first I felt smug that I already have a journal and didn’t need to be told to use it, it is true that I haven’t written in it much in the last 4-5 years. Perhaps the lack of daily dialog contributed to my stress level. I just heard Maria’s clock go off. Will she make it?? Today is the first College Park Scholars meeting of the new semester. I really, really hope that this semester we are able to have fewer meetings, shorter meetings, and move the meeting from Monday!!
January 27, 2012
Book Release Party for Pink and Blue (Facebook post)
January 27, 2018
Mazunte Morning (Facebook post)
January 27, 2019
Remember that book proposal I submitted back in November? They said yes, so consider me engaged. (Facebook post)
January 27, 2023
Well, there’s a nice helping of Smith Island Cake for you! Five layers of writing, three layers of Spanish, with tasty bits of motherhood and my hatred for meetings.
Two updates:
My daughter: Maria turned out beyond “nice”. She still is not a morning person, but I can’t hear her alarm clock anymore because she lives several miles away. Like I had to, she is figuring out how to be and live and do. She is a better writer than I am.
That 2019 book: There’s a proposal, an introduction, and one and a half chapters. There are scores of images from Sears catalogs, and lots of research notes. The publisher let me drop the project when I couldn’t access the primary sources I needed, due to the pandemic. Since then, I knitted over a hundred hats, mitts, and scarves, and started this project. That book? Like my high school crush on V, just a pleasant and slightly embarrassing memory.