On verbosity

Would you like to know the difference between me and K? (I am pretending you said yes, you would.) K uses words like dodgeballs, throwing as many as possible, as fast as possible. A hailstorm, a maelstrom, a tidal wave of words washes over me and I am drowning in them, and so I say nothing while I try to catch my breath and K celebrates a victory in leadership.

Me, I think words are like a game of Jenga, and I can only insert one here if I remove one from there. Words should be thoughtfully selected, measured and poured. Words are limited and precious, and must be employed strategically with no waste. Words are more powerful when there are less of them. 

I do not know if one of us is more right than the other. But I know we are playing two very different games. 

So many things I could have done

The job at the university is a three day a week thing, if I’m honest.  They think it’s a full time gig and employ me full time but I complete what needs to be done in three days which leaves me Fridays to do my own doctoral work (and more recently to visit T and build Lego flowers).  And on Mondays… well I accepted a counselling position which is a funny thing because that’s the world I left in frustration- but titrated down to one weekly dose it feels different.  I like it most days. I also work alone, which I prefer. 

But these kids are different from the kids where I used to work.  This is the gritty part of town and these are the kids who were kicked out of mainstream school.  About half of them live in foster care.  Today I met a fourteen-year old who tells me she sometimes drinks hand sanitizer when she can’t get a fix. Her school safety plan has a note about how we must keep hand sanitizer out of any unsupervised spaces.  This piece of information is still stuck in processing.  Sometimes I have thought of myself as having been exposed to some pretty grim stuff.  And this kid just blew my cover. I don’t know that much at all. 

 

No Day.

Today is not a Snow Day, it’s a No Day, and the disappointment feels more connected to cancer than it does to anything else.

Snow Day

I grew up on the Winter Prairies where there was no such thing as a Snow Day, although we often had snow.  Winter Prairie snow is dusty and dry and it doesn’t generally block roads or cause the kind of Armageddon that it causes here on the Wet Coast. Snow Days are a real possibility here and probably the only bad thing about working from home is missing out on the joy that a Snow Day brings.  However, tomorrow is an Out day, the one day a week I have decided to participate in the world, so if tomorrow is, in fact, a Snow Day, I will partake in joy with my friends.  

Let’s pretend that tomorrow is a Snow Day. I have no meetings booked because I am meant to be Out in the world.  If tomorrow is a Snow Day I will drive in the snow to the closed school to bring breakfast to the caretaker because that is a tradition.  And then I will go to the grocery store and buy things to make soup.  Coconut curry. With shrimp.  And cilantro, lots of cilantro.  If tomorrow is a Snow Day then I will bring soup to T and pretend we are on vacation and that she does not have cancer.  And then I will have a nap on the couch and dream about summer.