Update, on the tip of my tounge

Life continuesh to be  rich and full here in Enoughshville.  

I often tell any junior colleague in my orbit, any potential mentor-ee, that "When it comes to advice, I'm full of it!".    Well, here's my advice for the week; you know how some people urge you to "Bite your tongue!"?  My advice:  don't do it!  Don't bite your tongue!

Because, dang it, it's uncomfy!  I think I chomped mine during my sleep on Wednesday night, and I'm still feeling it.  In fact, partly because of where the sore spot is, I have a bunch of trouble saying "S"s, and it turnsh out there are a LOT of eshes in the shentenshesh we shpeak!  I also, due to my malady, know a lot more now about what my tongue looks like in the mirror: I can barely see where I hurt it, but I am much more aware that my tongue is much wider than I'd ever thought, and that it looks a lot more like a 1970's shag carpet than I would have thought possible.  

Aside from the chomped tongue, I'm doing great.  [Although, really, it's astounding how much a sore tongue keeps intruding on my consciousness and my mood, so saying that I'm doing great otherwise is saying a lot.]  Classes started this week, and I am very much enjoying the students in my class.  I was supposed to cap the class at 20, but I let in two more of my favorite students, so it's a large class -- at least by our standards for a writing-intensive math course -- and this means I'll have lots of grading to keep me occupied all spring.  And fortunately for me, it's a large class of students who are, so far, seeming to throw themselves into the joy of working together and wrestling out loud with tricky geometrical concepts.  

I got to spend some time doing math this week with my eldest grandchild, Achild; it's fun thinking about counting by 10s and counting backwards, and we got to use my chalkboards together.  I'm hoping we can do more of this!

I'm also in the early throes of training for a half-marathon that a couple of my friends decided to do together at the end of March.  Today, I'm appreciating resting up after a long training run.  We'd let ourselves dial back our runs over the past year, and none of us had run more than 4-ish miles at a time for several months, but this morning we did a 6-mile training run that somehow got an extra 2 miles tacked on at the end, and I'm very, very content to just sit here and type updates right now.  

In a different realm of sports, Nelson's middle school team won their recent basketball game, an emotionally important one that he described as "a revenge game".  Playoffs are in two weeks; he says he's going to miss the kids on the team so much after they move onto high school. As I'm his mom, I encouraged him to take advantage of the chances his group home gives him to sign up for other programs to get involved with; making friends in different friend-groups is so important.  (I might have geeked out a bit and explained it as "diversify your social portfolio"; sorry about that, Nelson!)  But really, things are going well, and his new living situation already means that he's eating well, and he's appropriately proud that his blood sugars are "in the green" these days.  Whoop!

OfSnough is likewise doing well, although now that we have a new senator, he's a bit at odds-and-ends on Tuesdays, and he'll have to find his own new social group, or a new way to protest, or some such.   The two of us came very close to visiting Jason; this would have been the first time we've seen him since Christmas 2019, but at the last minute, he waved us off because of needing space to deal with a break-up.  In his case, breaking up also means finding a new place to live, and so it'll take a little while to sort that out.   But in the meanwhile, I've done a bunch of back-and-forth texting with him, and OfSnough has helped him sort out some financial stuff.  

Jason: " An maaaan I got such great parents thank you"

Me: "Yes, you are right -- you DO have great parents! "

So, even though it's hard times, I'm glad that it gave us a way to be back in touch and helpful (because, when it comes to advice, I'm full of it!)

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yoursh be shimilarly proshperoush.