A Red Letter Day

Not today, but beer bought for us by our amazing country director last week!

Wednesday dawned graciously to the sounds of someone retching outside our window before the sun had risen.  I could tell today was going to be different than the last twenty four hours of sadness because my first thought was:

"is that a male or female retching, do you think?"

And thus dawned a day brighter than the rest.

As I toppled out of bed, giving a bleary eyed goodbye to Topher (who always manages to wake up seven and a half minutes before me, thusly arriving to school on time, and without a rushed dressing, instead of my harried gathering of long skirts and ruffled shirts and three minutes past seven arrival), I noticed that despite eating a third of batch of brownies last night, this morning I was feeling quite chipper.  Meaning, I did NOT have the dreaded but inescapable morning after brownie remorse! It was not present!  Instead, I was feeling quite graciously thin!

"Good sign!" I said to my girlish figure in the mirror.

And thusly I did not respond as waspishly as I normally would have, either in voice or in mind, when my co-teacher arrived thirteen minutes late (ha!) and informed me as we were walking to the classroom that today he would be giving an oral test during the second hour, and so during the first hour, I would be teaching the auxiliary verbs must and have to and the difference between them.

Waspish or not, I had to ask:

"But, what is the difference?"

And do you know, dear friends? It's so obvious, yes?  

You must do something when you are telling yourself you need to do something.  

You have to do something when someone or something else is telling you to do something. Like a rule.

Or, at least, that's the definitions I cobbled together after my co-teacher's clipped explanation as we entered the classroom and told the students to sit down.

Ahh, now it makes sense! Of course!

Now that we've covered that hurdle successfully (quite so, I might add! Involving a spur of the moment matching game of actions to "must" or "have to" thus reinforcing the fact that I really don't think there is a difference in common American English, but really, follow the rule everyone!), let's talk about the oral exam.

Or actually let's not.  It's just better if we know that all students who were lucky enough to receive "Use "must" or "have not" in a sentence" as their one question oral exam passed with flying colors!  

Hark!  The herald grammar angels sing!

And then there was the best two hours wherein I gifted my counterpart TWO HOURS OF KATE TEACHING!  YOU GET TO RELAX! And, how excited was he!  He said:

"What a wonderful, lovely, amazing Christmas present!  You are the best Volunteer to ever live!"

(or really he maybe said "How nice! Thank you!" Same same, yeah?)

And then I had two glorious hours teaching my trainees three differentiated activities for teaching their future students how to write logically and cohesively using pronouns to replace proper nouns when repeated and connecting words to join ideas.  Clear, yes?

It was in these two hours that the hallmarks of a Red Letter Day began to appear because I was just so golly joyous!

And then, after a short pitstop at a failed post office visit, there was sweet, glorious pork and rice for lunch!  Oh, fried pork and white rice with pickled cucumbers, how I adore thee!  You take upon the mantle of deliciousosity and cheaposity and lift it to the highest of mantled levels!  

Over which this mantle of manna pork and rice it was there that Topher certified such a Red Letter Day by informing me that I did have ten comments on my wee little post from yesterday, after many a single digit (or zero) comment posts in a row!  Most expressing abiding love and desire for tears to dissipate! 

Dissipate, they did comrades in Christmas!  Because of you I think the Reeses Christmas Tree angels swooped down upon me as I slept and gifted me such a Red Letter Day (and TWO Reeses Christmas Trees!)

And then! THEN!  There were leftover brownies!

Leftover brownies, I say!

Enjoyed with some Order of the Phoenix and some adorable Topher nap-grunting nearby.  Nothing better, I tell you.

Except! Except for library book organizing!  What's better, I ask, then a day that includes organizing young adult books?  I'm seventy percent sure that I one hundred percent need to be a librarian, just so I can organize books for a living.  And read them!  Read them and organize them and get paid to do it! While eating brownies! Theoretically, of course.

And finally, friends, just as I thought the Red Letter Day was concluding, what happened but that I got to witness the second best thing to receiving holiday packages yourself: watching your friends and fellow holiday deprived volunteers open theirs.  While wearing eyeliner, like you haven't in a few months.  While drafting a post such as this, and contemplating joining Timeline on Facebook!

And then you decide you want, need, MUST/HAVE TO get Timeline and it's glorious!

Throw in the little bit of day dreaming I did of three years from now about a future little dimpled and snotster chubster babe that looks like the Toph, and you have, what else, but a Red Letter Day.