The B Word

Irony is posting to your blog on the theme of “balance” at midnight when just ten minutes ago you vowed to work on the chapter that was due to your editors, uhm, TODAY. But when there’s something blossoming, you let it bloom.

S.O. was going to go to Africa—his boss had a ticket that was originally purchased for his son, but neither he nor his son could use it. (The boss’s son thought he was going to Ghana for his volunteer teaching experience. But you know how it goes—you say Ghana, I say Guyana....) So after sweating through a week of trying to figure out how to pull together a spur of the moment trip to Mother Africa, S.O. finally threw in the towel. Deflated, he sat at the kitchen table and went through the mail. He asked me for a coin to scratch of some “instant win” thing on an advertisement for a repossessed car sales event. While A. watched Max & Ruby reruns, S.O. scratched, and I did my cheesy “Big Money” dance. Mommy mojo kicked in—turns out that we won the 2,000.00 grand prize shopping spree…strangely close to the amount of $ we would have shelled out for his trip.

So, we celebrated by all climbing into bed to watch Good Times on Nick at Nite—S.O. in his jammies, me fully clothed in work attire, and A. in her pyjamas, crocheted poncho, and princess Barbie crown (you know, the one with the strobe-like flashing jewel in the center).

After falling asleep for a few hours, I went downstairs to clean up, where I found that A. had discovered the joy of cutting and pasting, and had spread this joy liberally throughout as many rooms as possible.

If I think about it too much, it would be scary to think about how much TV adds joy to my life. So I won’t think about it. But, I LOVE the show Medium and I love my Tivo even more. After a liberal dose of recorded television, all seems right with the world. So much so, that I cleaned up the construction paper—and the dinner detritus--and decided that if only I can stay up all night I am sure that I can become the professor I was meant to be.

Now if only my eye would stop twitching!