The ides of February

I wanted to include a photo of the lovely pink blooms on my epiphyllum orchid cactus - actually it's Veeka's that I gave her as a birthday present 2 Aprils ago. The idea is that it'd always bloom on or near her birthday; well, the blooms are coming out NOW during the ides of February. Winter is not my favorite time as all sorts of nasty things happen, such as the awful cold-flu-whatever combo I came down with Jan. 31 after visiting the health club. I think I picked it up there. It lasted two weeks and then Veeka got sick in the middle of it so both of us were down. Meanwhile, other crises (most of which I am not going to go into) were erupting and it was beyond difficult trying to deal with life-as-hell outside the home while feeling like Godzilla. I'm still on antibiotics trying to get well.

One of many difficulties was Veeka was not doing well at her new school so I had to pull her out at the end of January and send her back to her old school. She's happy there and doing much better but it was traumatic (at least for me) to go through all the parent-teacher conferences that went into my decision. Also in January, I decided I needed to learn how to build a web site so I signed up for a class at the local community college. It took many, many hours of sitting in lines to register, talk to a counselor, etc., and then when I started reading the syllabus online, I quickly learned the class was structured only for PCs, not Macs. I could not believe a computer class at a college would have such a gap but it did (there were no warnings posted on any of the registration materials) so I withdrew. So many hours wasted there.

Writing for the WaPo blog went well but ate up way many more hours than I had budgeted. Meanwhile, several freelance assignments (including one for an Icelandic magazine) came in so it was a war trying to find the time to write. And then I got sick. Sigh.

Because of these and other things, I've been driven to seeking the Guy Upstairs for help and one day I noticed Veeka (see photo) spreading out a blanket on the floor and gathering a notebook and pencils and various books beside her. What was she doing, I asked. Well, she answered, she wanted to pray like Mommy. Well...guess there are a lot worse things the kid could imitate.