August 28: Go On Without Me, Sacrifice, Eat Chocolate All Day

Billy, knowing the plane was going to crash pretty soon, closed his eyes, traveled in time back to 1944.  He was back in the forest of Luxembourg again--with the Three Musketeers.  Roland Weary was shaking him, bonking his head against a tree.  "You guys go on without me," said Billy Pilgrim.

Billy is trying to make a sacrifice.  He knows that he will slow his companions down as they try to elude German soldiers.  Possibly cause them to be captured.  So he tells them to leave him behind.  Perhaps he's not worried because he's already jumped in time.  He knows that he will survive.

I apologize for my absence yesterday.  I spent the day cleaning out a portion of my attic and then hosting my book club.  I had to sacrifice something.  That something happened to be writing a blog post.  Granted, my sacrifice didn't save anybody's life or change the world in any way.  It simply preserved my sanity.

I think that most people's days are filled with sacrifices.  Every morning when my alarm goes off, I force myself to get out of bed and go to work.  I'm never excited about it.  I just do it for my family.  It helps me provide for my wife and children.  This week, the fall semester begins at the university.  On Wednesday, I'll be teaching composition to a group of freshmen from 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.  Not excited about that, either.  But I do it for my family.

I want to eat chocolate all day long.  I don't.  Sacrifice to my health.  When I got home from work this afternoon, I just wanted to take a nap for about ten hours.  I didn't.  I drove my daughter to school for band camp.  Sacrifice.  Tonight, I'm going to do a load of laundry.  Possibly do some prep for teaching.  Work on a poem for a couple I know who's getting married this weekend.  Sacrifice.  Sacrifice.  Sacrifice.

Sacrifice sometimes is difficult.  Ask Jesus.  And sometimes sacrifice is easy.  Ask any mother or father.

Tonight, Saint Marty is thankful for the sacrifices his parents made for him.

September 6: Creek Kept Rising, First Day of School, Cookies

All it did was rain.  It rained, and the creek started to rise.  The creek, naturally, rises every time it rains; this didn't seem any different.  But it kept raining, and, that morning of the twenty-first, the creek kept rising.

Dillard is talking about rain around the summer solstice.  The remnants of Hurricane Agnes.  It has been downgraded to a tropical storm, which means a lot of rain and wind, which causes a whole lot of flooding around Tinker Creek.  Buckets of water.  Trees washing away.  Boulders rolling downstream.  Very Old Testament stuff.

Don't they look happy?

It was raining when I woke up this morning.  Thunder.  Lightning.  The whole shebang.  We got the kids up, dressed, fed, and out the door to the bus stop.  By 7:27 a.m., they were on their way to another year of academic advancement.  And by 8:30 a.m., I was back at home, eating some Burger King.  It was a relatively painless transition from summer freedom to autumn drudgery.

And I did the good parent thing, as well.  My wife and I made chocolate chip butterscotch cookies for my son and oatmeal butterscotch cookies for my daughter.  The whole house smells like a Mrs. Fields kiosk at the mall.

I will be at the bus stop when my son gets home in a couple of hours.  My daughter has driver's ed this afternoon., so I will be teaching at the university by the time she returns from her first day of tenth grade.

It's still raining.  The thunder and lightning have pretty much subsided, but I haven't seen any ark floating down the street yet, although the day is still fairly young.  I have an evening of teaching composition ahead of me.  Essays to workshop.  Journal entries to write.  Knowledge to impart.  You know, the whole professor thing.

It has been a good day.  School bus. Cookies.  I even got to go back to bed for a little while this morning after my sausage croissants.  Days are never perfect, but this gets pretty damn close.  I'm sure that my son will come home, watch some inappropriate videos on my iPad, maybe find some inappropriate cartoons or pictures.  Life has a way of getting in the way of perfection.

Saint Marty will just eat some cookies and pretend that he's the best father in the world.  At least for today.