The Big Wrapup

I have to leave not long from now to go get Boy and take him for his check-up at the orthodontist this afternoon, and I still haven’t gotten all the mess shoved off my desk, so I figured I might better go ahead and report in before I get too deep into other stuff.

Random Wordiness

Got an e-mail late yesterday from my semi-literate co-worker who thinks “prolithic” is a word--in part it said: …any roomers that you might hear with regard to my… Oh, sure, I misspell words and make typos all the times. But it takes a special sort of education to mistake “roomer” for “rumor.”

Then I got to the house yesterday afternoon and in the hustle to get Rebecca up to the park for her tryout, noticed a story on the local news about a man out in the Huffman area who had been beaten and robbed in his own home. The snappy graphic beside the anchorman’s head read:

Eldery
Man
Beated

Again, everyone makes mistakes, but still--these jokers are supposed to be the holders of all knowledge. Seems like someone could have caught that.

Anyway, got Bec and we were off to the park. The past few days have been tryouts for the team for the fall--even when there’s nothing going on, there STILL seems to be soccer. The coach is really trying hard to get at least 18 players so we can have some more substitutes. We’ve only had three new girls try out, which still puts us short by a couple.

It was blazing hot yesterday, and I didn’t have a chance to put on anything comfortable, so I propped up on the bleachers in my soon-wilted dress shirt and my heat-sink black polyester pants, reading my book about Miss Wooster. I tried to keep the cover out of view, mainly because I actually wanted to read and not have to give an impromptu history lesson on Old South whorehouses. And thankfully, everyone is used to me being rather standoffish, so they let me be. Mostly.

Some more sort of book--I finished it up last night late, and spent a few minutes Googling around to see if I could find any of the names of the people she mentioned having known. The only one I could find was Sol Smith Russell, a 19th Century comic actor she mentions very briefly as having known (but not in THAT way). Overall, the book is alternately moving and maudlin--approximately 50% of the book is her melodramatic cautionary tales of her poor despair at having lived a life scorned by polite society, and the other half is a genuinely tragic recount of her attempts through the years to care for her younger sisters after the death of her father and mother.

She tells her tale recounting events of sixty years prior, and she manages to put great stagey flourish into words that supposedly came out of her mouth as a child. She takes great pains to proclaim her own huge great sinfulness, but then goes on to (rightly) excoriate that of a society that overlooked a man’s dalliances, and looked down on their consorts. Throughout, she seems torn between just coming out and admitting she loved the material blessings of her craft (for in later life she was quite well off, and mentions her money and jewels and furs and travels often enough) and making sure that everyone knew that SHE knew her own state of grace. She mentions that countless men begged her to allow them to make an honest woman of her, but she (bravely, in her mind) sends them away so that they will not share in her fall. Then she will turn right around and recall various other men she allowed herself to be smitten with, almost knowing it would turn out bad before she took up with them.

In the end, her actual circumstances are dramatic enough without all the mawkishness and dissembling. Reading between the lines offers an awful look at a world of Dickensian orphan homes, squalid boardinghouses, polite liars, degenerate men, and haughty bluenoses. Believe it or not, her story was made into an opera by Dorothy Hindman, a composer and music professor at Birmingham-Southern. It would make a pretty good movie, too. I’ll post some more excerpts later on next week sometime.

So, I read and mopped sweat off of me and chased mosquitoes off my arms and managed to keep an eye on the girls as they did their drills. Even in the heat, they still managed to do pretty good. Better than I could do, but then that’s not saying anything.

And tomorrow? Why it’s that silly 3 versus 3 “got milk?” tournament over across town! FOUR games tomorrow--8, 9:30, 12:30, 2, and then some Sunday if they win any Saturday. And Reba is finally going tomorrow for her day at the spa she got for Mother’s Day, which means she’s gonna have to ditch the rest of the kids with the grandparents in order to get any of the actual peace and quiet promised by the gift certificate.

Yardwork’s just gonna have to go by the wayside this weekend--and everything’s starting to get going good--the hosta is blooming now, and the miniature hydrangeas, and…you know what? I just remembered that I haven’t checked on those plants I put out last weekend. I sure hope they’re still alive. Might better water them tonight, I suppose. ANYway, and the weeds are coming up nicely, and I need to fill up the regular bird feeders again, and I probably need to change the juice in the hummingbird feeder. It’s been in there for a few weeks now (I was anticipating an early return due to the warm weather), and the last thing anyone wants is a drunk hummingbird. They’re little, but they’re mean when they get a snootful.

Church on Sunday, and I have GOT to finish the schedule for next year’s classes this weekend. Sometime. Like tonight and tomorrow. Might have to take a paper copy and work on it at the soccer games tomorrow, but it has to be done sometime or I’ll be in a bind.

I think there’s more I’m supposed to be doing, but I can’t quite remember what it is. I’m sure I will be reminded.

SO, Lord willing I’ll see you all on Monday, and we can see if I remembered it! OH!--I’m supposed to go right now and pick up Reba’s paycheck! Oops. And I MUST remember about Boy! As I said, tune in Monday and let’s see how this turns out.

Have a great weekend!
posted by Terry at 1:46:00 PM