Day 11

Sunny cold day again - ran up to the meadow and back with Molly quickly before school. 

This is my messy corner, taken in early December - no snow on the ground outside!  The flowers are from Tim for 25 years together. 

My hands are ink-stained tonight, after helping 8th graders with their pen & ink images.  It is surprising, when you have known how to do something for such a long time that you can't even remember learning it yourself, to realise that these kids have never done such a thing, and it is a skill to be learned, to use a nibbed pen and dip it into an ink bottle and draw with it like you would with a pencil.  I am old enough that I learnt to write with such a pen, each desk had an inkwell and you dipped your pen into it and scrawled messily across your page!

So tonight I took off my boots and sat on the couch in between cutting Matthew's hair and fetching Nick from Journalism.  My feet rub slowly and companionably against one another, just as my fathers' feet used to, and just as Matthews' feet do, an affectionate genetic trait. 

The skinny 20-year old calico cat Lily came and sat on me for a while, so I was petting with one hand and drawing with the other.  Imagine having whiskers like that.