I heart Google images.

Today was a bad day...quite honestly the worst I've experienced in a while. I am tired, my head hurts, and I am oh so overwhelmed. I thought, however, that I would try to accentuate the positive rather than bitch and complain, so here we go.

For tonight's post, I thought I'd include a nice montage of the only things getting me through this week.

Let's begin......

First there's my favorite candy which is currently residing in my desk drawer at school where I am keeping it so I can eat too much of it.

Then there's my favorite t.v. show that comes on in approximately 27 minutes. (I've promised myself I'll grade while I watch. Ummmm, yeah right.)

Next we have colored pens which are the only things that make grading bearable. Green and purple are my favorites, but I like to switch off every few papers to shake it up a bit.

Did I mention I started a great new book? I can't wait to curl up with it a bit this weekend.

And finally? There's the promise that this will all be over in 7 days. I am ready to be baking cookies, listening to carols, and giving presents. (Okay, I am excited about the getting, too) It's so hard to be Christmasing when I feel so overhelmed with school, but my break begins in 6 days, and it can't come fast enough!

Get Me Out of Here

So when I spent the summer of 2001 in England, I discovered Grantchester Orchard. It's a hike from Cambridge. (Literally, you have to walk there on foot through pastures.) When you complete the journey, though, you end up here.



Full trees, quaint tables, and a little stand that sells tea and scones. What could be more pleasant? Good tea, delicious scones and cream, and a good book. If heaven doesn't feel like this, I'm not interested.


Rupert Brooke immortalized this place in his famous poem "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester."

And clever modern men have seen
A Faun a-peeping through the green,
And felt the Classics were not dead,
To glimpse a Naiad's reedy head,
Or hear the Goat-foot piping low: . . .
But these are things I do not know.
I only know that you may lie
Day long and watch the Cambridge sky,
And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,
Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,
Until the centuries blend and blur
In Grantchester, in Grantchester. . . .


Now each time I read Rupert Brooke (even if it's another poem), I always remember the breeze through the trees and the beautiful simplicity of an afternoon at Grantchester Orchard.


Today we read "The Soldier" in my British Lit class. You know the one; "If I should die, think only this of me: / That there's some corner of a foreign field / That is for ever England." Gaining a force of its own, it can move any English major to tears...or at least give you chills and remind you, "This is why I read!"


I am reading it aloud to my class of sleepy seniors when I hear a loud slurping from my right. One culprit and his morning milkshake are to blame. The class snickered a bit and I glared. When he clulessly said, "What?" I explained that he was managing to "slowly slurp every last ounce of litereray passion from my soul."


Oh that I had a time machine! I'd be 20 years old again with no students and no papers and no bills and no responsibilities. I'd be sipping tea beaneath the orchard trees this very second.