Lent 2007

You know, it's Lent now.

One year, on Ash Wednesday, I asked L* to smudge ashes on my forehead.

I didn't do that this year--the ashes always make my forehead break out--but I did give up sugar and white flour. Mostly because my body has been in mad sugar spiral all semester. I'm currently pumping it full of yerbas and amino acids and live cultures. We'll see how it all turns out.

I am still sweetening my coffee, with a little stevia (sweet leaf). It's got a kind of cloying aftertaste, like real licorice, but I kind of like that. (I can sit there and suck on a licorice twig, so I admit to being a bit of an oddball).

L* and I are putting together our ideas for our presentation on Saturday (see below).

My mom was just in town last weekend for a visit. It was wonderful! L* and I are both wiped out from the museo, dining, cooking, driving, lakewalk, and just the 24-hour presence of a house guest, but it was a great visit. My Mom is just fabulous, and she was really easy to be with. I got her hooked on Octavia Butler's DAWN while she was here, and she left with the trilogy in her luggage.

Driving through Oakland recently, I caught a glimpse of God's Gym out of the corner of my eye. Clearly G@d thinks I should go for a lakewalk today.



In my lit class, we're reading Sherman Alexie. Y'all just know how I love Sherman Alexie! Two of my favorite stories in the whole world are "A Drug Called Tradition" and "Distances." I ended up reading aloud most of "A Drug Called Tradition" to my students in class yesterday. I seem to find something more each time I read it.

This is what struck me yesterday:

The boys sit by the fire and breathe, their visions arrive. They are all carried away to the past, to the moment before any of them took their first drink of alcohol.