Reading, Riting and Rithmatec

My 3 R's today.

Reading: I am following RuthO's story - a modern one. It should be good, I like a very clever plot.

Riting: I have something to finish for PatM and my chapter 34 to polish and I overslept! I was so tired from my excursion to Black Mountain that I slept 3 hours later than usual. lol

Rithmatec: bills, bills, bills. Yuck - one of my least favorite things. Did you know I failed subtraction in school? I don't remember if I wrote about this earlier - wait let me check -- nothing shows up when I search my blog, so here it is:

I could never figure out how to subtract the big number from the little. I always tried to take away the top number from the bottom. lol My 2nd grade teacher got so frustrated I know she yelled at me one day while everyone was outside at recess. I went home crying and later that night my dad came into my room and solved my problem. He taught me to put the line above the numbers and not below. So instead of subtracting down, I subtracted up. It worked and it was a simple solution. I subtracted up for years and divided up too (since subtraction is a major part of division). My teacher did try to give me a failing grade when she got my first homework with the answers above the problem, but then my dad went to school (or maybe called) and after that there were no more problems. He never raised his voice, unlike my mom. He also preferred mom to do most of the discipling and that way he could stay a good guy! But I love my mom fiercely as I did my dad, so in our family it worked.

My dad was funny at times. He had one of those sense of humors (much like Rawlings). He also was not always thinking right - such as when he taught me, a mere toddler under 4, how to build things up along the fence so I could climb out of the yard. He used some stools from my sand box, I think. He believed in independence and taught all of us early to be as independent as we could. My mom, however, was not pleased with this little fence climbing since it was she that had to chase me down the street, while my dad went off to work.

Independence! Of course, I delayed my independence until the sixth grade and my whole class formed that secret club; but it was the combination of my father's simple lessons and the meaness of my classmates that gelled inside my soul. I have been independent since, climbing fences both real and hypothetical. Hypothetically speaking, every phase we go through is a fence, of sorts. We have to somehow get over it to move on. From nursery school to elementary, then junior high, then high, and some people college. From being close buddies to finding new love. from single life to married life (or commitment to another); to being alone to being a parent, to relying upon your parents to your parents relying upon you. These are all fences and it is the stuff we use to elevate us until we can swing our leg over the top and run free that makes life so very damn interesting. It is not the fence but the stepping stools we push up against it that makes us so unique- how do we as individuals do what we have to make it over the top.

Well, our poor fellas in Expectations have a very large fence staring them in their sweet, handsome faces. What will they do? How will they build their way to independence and freedom? We shall see.

till tomorrow - I am off to pay the bills and keep this internet access going. Oh yes. I now us a calculator to figure out my money. No more drawing lines above the top number.

till tomorrow,

gayle