March

It is almost over.  This month which is supposed to herald spring.  Winter is still huffing and puffing here, but the summer will arrive soon enough.  We're all impatient here in upstate New York.  It's the only place I've lived where people start wearing shorts in January when temperatures are still freezing.  Usually college students, but still! 

The first A&P test is under our belts.  The instructor says she gets really nervous about every group with the first test.  She is great fun.  There is laughter in every class, and sometimes the pictures she paints with her words have us gasping for air...ok, that may be an exaggeration, but how wonderful to look forward to class.  It's not all fun and games truth be told.  We have an enormous amount of information to learn, and we have to push to get through it.  Sometimes the last hour on Sunday afternoon seems to drag by until I want to jump out of my skin.  But it isn't because she is less than wonderful.  I think it's that my mind is on to the next thing.  Yesterday it probably had to do with the fact that I had been up since 4 am.

Today I volunteer at the acupuncture clinic.  Last night JS and I were laughing uproariously.  I have these seeds attached to the little protective thingies at my ears.  You know what I mean about the thingies.  Before long I will be spouting off their exact names, but for now, let's improvise.  So I have these seeds attached with surgical tape.  They haven't peeled off yet.  I didn't say a word about them this weekend at school.  I was commenting to JS that I think it would be hilarious to send out a ridiculous story via the grapevine about the little things attached to Caris's ears.  I wonder if folks would come up and try to get a peak.  What kind of story would it be?  Perhaps that they have something to do with some strange rite of healing...which isn't so far off the mark!  But it would be fun to elaborate.  If you have ideas, let me know!   I won't tell you what they are really for...let you guess.  Please feel free to post your comments.

One of our classmates presented a terrific passion project about birds yesterday.  She's had a snowy owl nesting nearby all winter...she says you know where you are by the long line of cars.  The cars of course belong to all these bird nerds (that isn't my terminology by the way!  I love birds, which you may have gathered if you've read some of my posts.)  And someplace else nearby a sandhill crane is hanging out eating birdseed.  Now THAT is rather amazing.  Don't sandhill cranes get their name because they come through the sandhills of Nebraska?  I don't know.  I could be making it up.  But I remember not being terribly impressed as a child when we passed by and my mother pointed them out...it seemed like thousands of them.  Maybe a quatrillion.  Now of course I've grown to appreciate all of those amazing rarities and delicacies of childhood that haven't followed me into adulthood...including my mother's plum jam, made from all the plums that grow wild in Nebraska. 

Well, I have rambled on and on, and it's time for me to go and volunteer.  I wonder what rarity or delicacy you remember from childhood.  I'll have to ask people today.  And perhaps report back tomorrow.  Bye bye dear readers.  Caris