I wrote most of this entry yesterday but finished it tonight, Wednesday.
Waking up at 7 this morning was rough; for the last week I've become accustomed to sleeping as late as 10:00. But Allyson had to get up for school this morning, and therefore so did I. When the alarm went off, I walked across the house to my room, where she was sleeping.
"Time to get up," I said with all the cheerfulness I could muster.
"Nnnh," she replied.
I crawled in next to her and pulled the electric blanket up over my shoulders. "What time do you really have to be up?" I mumbled.
"7:20."
I fumbled with my phone alarm and then snuggled up to her and CiCi.
When the alarm went off again, Allyson said in a voice that reminded me of the little girl she was yesterday, "It's your fault I'm still in bed."
"My fault?"
"Yes. I was about to get up but you made me stay in bed."
"I made you?"
"Yes. You laid down with me and made me fall back asleep."
I grinned at this admission that I am not the only one who still enjoys cuddling. "Well, you gotta get up. You're going to school today."
I, on the other hand, went back to sleep until Allyson woke me up at 8. After I'd dropped her at school, I climbed back into bed. CiCi curled up beside me, but for some reason, she slept with her behind in my face. I could still hear her soft snores, and they made me smile as I drifted back off for a few more minutes of sweet morning sleep.
When I got up around 9:30, I was craving pancakes. I whipped up a batch of oatmeal flour batter with ginger and freshly grated nutmeg and sat down at the kitchen table to fry them on the electric griddle. They turned out so fluffy, for being gluten-free!
I still felt short of breath, but I decided not to focus on that. Today I'd woken up feeling determined to believe that I am getting better and to act like it, too. There's no reason to believe I have to be a statistic, and every reason to confess that I am going to regain all of my strength.
When Danny Gokey's "New Day" came on the radio, I got up and started dancing. It was a little more subdued than my usual kitchen dances, but it felt good. Yes, this was a new day, and I was going to enjoy every minute of it.
I was still catching my breath when I suddenly noticed an unfamiliar white SUV in my driveway. At first I thought it must belong to my friend Pam, who lives right down the road and often brings me goodies such as her famous, nourishing chicken stock. But then I realized it was a Kia. Pam drives... not a Kia.
I watched the car curiously. Perhaps someone had come to visit my new neighbors--a sweet family, yay!--and they had the wrong house.
Just as I was phoning Pam to make sure it wasn't her, a text message came through from my friend and coworker Melodie. She'd come to drop off a care package of comfort food!
I couldn't hide the happy tears when I greeted her through the storm door.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"I'm just touched!" I sniffled, holding one hand to my heart.
We gave each other air hugs, and then she was gone.
As I sat at the table unearthing my treasures, "Sparrows" by Cory Asbury came on the radio. I grinned in amazement when I pulled out a warm rotisserie chicken; I'd just been wishing that I could thaw a whole chicken and cook it in the Instant Pot. "You take good care of me," sang Cory.
"You do take good care of me," I said aloud around a bite of hot soup. "Thank you for being so good to me!"
I don't recall napping at all, but I did take it easy all day because I was rather tired despite not being sleepy. I didn't do much beyond a load of sheets and washing the dishes. I felt even more proud of myself than usual when I surveyed my kitchen, completely clean for the first time in well over a week.
My plans to turn in early were thwarted by an upcoming geometry test for Allyson. She didn't start studying until after 9 because she'd had a soccer game. (She wasn't allowed to play in it because of her recent Covid-19 infection, but she still had to be there with her team.)
The test included some simple trig word problems that she didn't understand. For example, she needed to figure out Juliet's angle of descent in her sight line to Romeo based on his distance from the balcony. She'd asked for help the week before, but I'd been busy with work. Now, I wasn't sure I'd have the brain power to help her, even if I could remember anything about trig. All I remembered was that I'd hated every minute of it in high school.
Amazingly, it all came back to me when she showed me the formulas for finding missing angles and side lengths using sines, tangents, and cosines.
"Now you just cross multiply," I said, tracing an x with my fingers on her Chromebook screen.
"How?" The fact that the equations included square roots had her stumped.
"Same as you always do."
"So it's x times square root of 2 on this side?"
"Yes. So you need to divide by..."
"Square root of two?"
"On both sides.... So now you have to get that radical out of the denominator. What could you multiply by to do that?"
She had no clue, and it was too late for guessing games.
"Square root of 2," I said.
"How?"
I grabbed the pencil and wrote it out for her. "So what is the square root of two times the square root of two?"
She stared at me blankly. I waited.
"Square root of... four?"
"Yes. And what is the square root of four?"
"Two."
"Exactly!"
She took it from there, and I held my breath as she typed her answer into the online math program. A moment later, a big green checkmark appeared. Yes!!
When I fell into bed at 11:30, I was utterly worn out in mind and body, but I was smiling. This 50-year-old has still got it! And man, do I love teaching!
I wasn't smiling when the alarm went off at 8 this morning, but I would do it again because look at this transcript of a text conversation I had this afternoon:
Allyson: i got an 88 on my geometry test
Sarah: Awesome! Yay us! ;)
Allyson: yea :)
It was a good day.
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| My Geometry Partner |
P.S. For the record, Allyson is very good at math and often helps her friends with geometry. This may have been the first time I've needed to tutor her. She got confused after missing a couple classes while she was sick. She was very easy to teach!
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Vitals: Didn't bother checking
Symptoms: mild nausea, fatigue, moderate nasal congestion, loss of smell, mild shortness of breath (sore throat... gone!!)
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