I borrowed two books from the library and failed to finish both of them. They were due last Friday, but they're still sitting in the passenger seat of my car.
I drove to northern Pennsylvania over the weekend to visit a cousin that I hadn't seen in over ten years. We are close to the same age, but she is married now and has two children. I didn't know what to expect when I pulled into her driveway, but I was pleased to find her happy and satisfied with her life, in an exhausted mother-of-two kind of way. I suppose I've reached a point in my own life where my relationship with my family is almost entirely determined by the effort I put forth. I also suppose I reached that point quite a while ago.
I feel tired when I get home from work, but I'm doing so much less now than I was this time last year. If I think about that fact, I feel less tired.
I've found that getting plenty of sleep and drinking plenty of water is the key to perhaps 90% of the problems that face people in life. It may not be a short-term solution for the nightmarish situations that seem to plague so many people, but I am convinced that it is essential in the long run.
This morning, my assistant principal came in to my classroom and gave me an old telescope. No one in this school teaches astronomy, so I do not know why he gave it to me. I'm taking it home this week and playing around with it myself. I'm going to carve out some telescope time and try to feel like a little kid again.
Here's a photograph I recently took at UConn:
