Outside:

It's dusk now as I sit in the kitchen and the sky is fiery.  Winter has been so mild.  It was 51 when I drove out today.  

Wearing:

Knit swing dress and scarf over leggings and boots.  Quite often.  I change up the scarves. 

Around the house:

We have a new water heater.  I will just let that sink in a moment.  It felt like a momentous announcement considering the way we discovered we needed a new water heater was finding its contents running over the laminate floor.  The floor we put in last winter.  And the winter before that.  (for real – our family is pretty remarkable in the bad luck odds department)   My husband was amazing however.  Like, he is approaching heroic levels of head of household-ing.  He sighed.  He mopped.  He demo'd the floor.  Again.  And then he said, "It could be worse."  And he is right.  Insert our motto – "It's not a bad way to suffer." 

Listening to:

…which made me tear up a bit remembering a boy who played an old upright piano right into the ground.  I saved the ornate facing of it when we finally replaced. It was stored for all the years we were in Europe.  It came out of hiding this week while moving things around. (see entry above) I am looking at a place to hang it.  

From the kitchen:

Busy cooks.  Their father and I are learning new skills and recipes along with them.  We have had a long stretch of very good eats and I will share more this week. 

From the learning room:

I love this job.  I truly do. And it is still very much my primary full time job. Retrospectively there was much scattering of my energy in earlier years. Trying to explore multiple outside projects.  "I could write, I could run a business, I could….."   Ironically now that the physical demands of parenting small children have lifted and my health is better than ever I feel less and less drive to add more.  This is enough.  It is tremendous in fact.  What a gift it is to have hours each day to read and listen to Robert Browning's own voice recite a poem and discuss the table of elements and to teach one young student the steps of multi-digit multiplicate.  Over and over and over.  (not kidding, it's taking an enormous amount of supervised repetition lol)  There are no angry customers to handle.  No unresonable bosses. It's a gift I am relishing even more today now that the lessons are very familiar and there is time to sit and chat and think deeply about them. 

Reading: 

Love Suffers Long – patience in education

What This is Us Teaches Us About Tragedy – and oh my word.  This series could fill up many posts.  

Flower Arranging.  I am not very good at this and am endeavoring to learn more