HELLO FROM THE ROAD

I have been silent here for far too long. I have excuses. August was the month from hell for me. I took on way too much work, the most upsetting aspect of which was that I hardly got to read at all.

Then on August 18, my birthday, I got the flu and was in bed for two days. After that, all I could do was go do the tutoring I had booked and go back to bed. That went on for a week. This was all preceded by taking on first a geometry student and then an algebra student, both of whom were in summer school and going at triple speed. I was completely rusty on geometry and not that swift on algebra either, so every minute I wasn't tutoring I was crash coursing myself thru a highschool geometry and then algebra text.

There was a rather amazing outcome for me after all that math study. Usually as I am falling asleep at night, I think about the book I am reading. Sometimes the characters are in my dreams and doing things that they don't do in the book. (Does that sound like it is really time for me to write a novel myself? I think so.) Other times I have realizations about life and people and society. Well, after studying theorems or linear equations or whatever for hours and doing the problems, I started having blinding realizations about life and people and society that looked like advanced math problems applied to life. It was kind of weird. I wondered if that is how the mind of a genius works. The only thing I did wrong is not getting up and writing them down.

On August 26, still coughing and sneezing and blowing my nose, I boarded an airplane and flew to Cincinnati, OH, to visit my son, his wife and my three grandchildren. But my trials and tribulations were not over. Hurricane Katrina was headed for the Ohio River last Monday plus some bonehead had left a tanker car full of styrene (the chemical that is used to make styrofoam) on a siding east of Cincinnati. It went past its use-by date and started venting styrene into the atmosphere. (Highly toxic and carcinogenic and prone to exploding is styrene.) So we were faced with possible evacuation orders. My very sensible son turned to me and said, "Maybe you should just go to Michigan tonight."

The rest of my family lives outside Ann Arbor, MI, so I headed to my Mom's house that night, two days ahead of my scheduled plan. It was for the best. She let me sleep all I wanted, put no demands on me and cooked all kinds of great food. We had fresh tomatoes, zucchini, peppers from the garden and lovely cool weather. I finished getting better.

Tomorrow I fly home and start a new teaching job on Tuesday. It is all good. I will teach at a very small private school which takes kids who have fallen behind grade level and brings them back up where they should be. I will have a class of 10 students of all different ages, just like the one room schoolhouse teachers I used to read about when I was a young girl dreaming of being a teacher someday. And after a 5 hour day, I can go home and READ!!! And then post on my blog. Best of all, they are going to give the geometry and algebra kids to the other teacher. Whew.

So check back soon. I will have more book reviews plus my musings about movies and music. Whatever you do, don't get the flu. Take your vitamins, get enough sleep and think good thoughts. If you used to live in New Orleans, my prayers go out to you.