Saturday, December 1, 2007

Lord what fools these mortals be!

Yes, if I were going to be really righteous about it, I'd have them memorize Bible verses. But I was baptized and confirmed Lutheran, and I was tortured by having to memorize dozens of Bible verses, parts of the church, and all the books of the Bible before I was allowed to be confirmed into the church. Plus, Ben has already been through a year of memorizing Bible verses.

So I decided to go with literature. Their first phrase to memorize being Puck's insight from A Midsummer Night's Dream. They both had it memorized in 2 days. I will probably continue with quite a bit of Shakespeare before I move on to famous sayings of our founding fathers, Sir Winston Churchill, and Mae West.

Speaking of fools, I have had a very Things are Broken kind of week, where the Blue Fairy tries her hand at various home maintenance tasks. I have a bathroom completely disassembled and am patching sheetrock, sanding subfloor, and a lovely new white pedestal sink, latex paint the color of "puppy paws", and vinyl flooring await me (you should have caught the comment from the guy in the flooring store when I started trying to drag out his rolls of remnants... "OK, I see we have an independent woman here who is used to doing things her way... maybe I can help..." as if I was going to wait for him to step up to bat); yesterday one of the circuit breakers from this house, circa 1956, MELTED DOWN in spectacular fashion (thank God it didn't take out any of its neighboring breakers, or melt the whole box down) and I scoured Santa Clara County for the appropriate replacement (I've decided the shop that finally had the part, called something like Bill's Circuit Breakers, should be renamed Shorthair Parts, because that's what they have you by if you need one of these); and as I write, I have a disassembled clothes dryer with an "idler" that is, by all human standards, completely idle. The drum won't turn without it. Perhaps it has retired (to some desert island - certainly not the version of retirement I am currently undergoing).

And so it goes. I became a yogi to endure frustrating events without blowing my own head fuses. Through all, I continue to breathe. And of course, I bake bread.