Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Sorries all around
If you will only get in the queue, you will get your apology for the dearth of writing in due time.
First to my children, three of whom are currently festooned with decorative red dots. Very cheery for this time of year, reminiscent of holly berries or strung cranberries. Only, the smallest girls are none too pleased to be wearing these itching, oozing sores. A pox upon them, when they are afraid to give a merry visage, or flit a paltry holiday jig. Too late! Too late! Alas, for my poor Goneril and Regan, pocked and burning with their fateful afflictions! [and here is where that literary reference breaks down. I dare not speak of a Cordelia lest madness overtake me and my lands]
R.'s chicken pox showed up about a week ago, but it was the mildest case you could hope for. Just when I was wondering if it were indeed the varicella-zoster virus or perhaps some mystery allergy, M. & L. erupted in the sad, sad sores. We are drawing lots of baths in our house of late. How did these children of the 21st century escape the vaccination? I have no idea. N. will wake up this morning with scores of sores to match his sisters. Merry Christmas, children! I'm sorry.
And then to the professors and students for whom I am grading, I have a holiday apology around here for you as well. Here I was sauntering lazily through the end of the semester, thinking I had a handle on the load of papers to grade (if only a little behind), when it came to my attention that fifty papers had been waiting for me online, pleased to sit on their electronic shelf while I went about my daily chores. Gasp! Every other duty fell aside as I charged into them! ALT+I M! Comments! Highlight! ALT+O F ALT+K! Fly fingers! Clothing piled up on my floor. Stacy came home from work to the dishes she left the night before. Children were left to forrage for scraps of meat or chew on shoe leather. (Another sorry, children!)
After two weeks and three assignments graded (pastorally and with much forebearance, mind you), I felt the breathing room to actually hang up my clothes, clean the kitchen, play a few rounds of AOE with the boy, and even watch the extended version (except for the 35 minute denouemnet, which has nary an extended or additional scene in it). But I am back at it today. Two more assignments to go before I sleep. So, apologies here are due and offered to the professors and students who have been patiently waiting for their work to be returned at all, having long since given up on getting them back in a timely manner.
There are others who should be in line in front of you for genuine apologies: my wife for putting up with an unshaven, grumpy man who hasn't lifted a finger around the house. The class on Sunday mornings who has suffered through a few very ad hoc lessons. The hundreds of friends and relatives who again this year received no Christmas letter or photo from our incommunicado clan. The neighbors who have not had the pleasure of seeing our yard garlanded with seasonal lights until barely a week ago. And, lastly, you. I have hopes of writing, even in the midst of such stresses, but if picking up a shirt seems to be a profound diversion from the tasks before me, there is little hope of typing a few hundreds words. Sorry.
First to my children, three of whom are currently festooned with decorative red dots. Very cheery for this time of year, reminiscent of holly berries or strung cranberries. Only, the smallest girls are none too pleased to be wearing these itching, oozing sores. A pox upon them, when they are afraid to give a merry visage, or flit a paltry holiday jig. Too late! Too late! Alas, for my poor Goneril and Regan, pocked and burning with their fateful afflictions! [and here is where that literary reference breaks down. I dare not speak of a Cordelia lest madness overtake me and my lands]
R.'s chicken pox showed up about a week ago, but it was the mildest case you could hope for. Just when I was wondering if it were indeed the varicella-zoster virus or perhaps some mystery allergy, M. & L. erupted in the sad, sad sores. We are drawing lots of baths in our house of late. How did these children of the 21st century escape the vaccination? I have no idea. N. will wake up this morning with scores of sores to match his sisters. Merry Christmas, children! I'm sorry.
And then to the professors and students for whom I am grading, I have a holiday apology around here for you as well. Here I was sauntering lazily through the end of the semester, thinking I had a handle on the load of papers to grade (if only a little behind), when it came to my attention that fifty papers had been waiting for me online, pleased to sit on their electronic shelf while I went about my daily chores. Gasp! Every other duty fell aside as I charged into them! ALT+I M! Comments! Highlight! ALT+O F ALT+K! Fly fingers! Clothing piled up on my floor. Stacy came home from work to the dishes she left the night before. Children were left to forrage for scraps of meat or chew on shoe leather. (Another sorry, children!)
After two weeks and three assignments graded (pastorally and with much forebearance, mind you), I felt the breathing room to actually hang up my clothes, clean the kitchen, play a few rounds of AOE with the boy, and even watch the extended version (except for the 35 minute denouemnet, which has nary an extended or additional scene in it). But I am back at it today. Two more assignments to go before I sleep. So, apologies here are due and offered to the professors and students who have been patiently waiting for their work to be returned at all, having long since given up on getting them back in a timely manner.
There are others who should be in line in front of you for genuine apologies: my wife for putting up with an unshaven, grumpy man who hasn't lifted a finger around the house. The class on Sunday mornings who has suffered through a few very ad hoc lessons. The hundreds of friends and relatives who again this year received no Christmas letter or photo from our incommunicado clan. The neighbors who have not had the pleasure of seeing our yard garlanded with seasonal lights until barely a week ago. And, lastly, you. I have hopes of writing, even in the midst of such stresses, but if picking up a shirt seems to be a profound diversion from the tasks before me, there is little hope of typing a few hundreds words. Sorry.
