“Above all, be the heroine of your life. Not the victim.” 

The rain started late last night. By 2, the wind was fierce and loud. This morning I found part of my front fence down. It has some rot anyway, but the wind helped it along. I lifted it and reconnected as best I could. I’ll have to call my factotum. Right now it is warm at 44° and foggy. The rain stopped a bit earlier and probably will not be back until much later if at all. My sister who lives north of Boston had rain now turned to snow.

Today is a perfect day for movies, black and white science fiction movies. Right now it is Stranger from Venus from 1954 starring Patricia Neal.

When I was a kid, I had only a couple of pairs of shoes. That seems to have been all I needed. My school shoes doubled as my church shoes. The rest of the time I wore sneakers. I remember the toes of my sneakers were sort of pointed. The sneakers were white and usually dirty. I did have snow boots that went over my shoes but not without a huge struggle. My solution was to pull my feet out of the boots first then pull my shoes out. I did the reverse going home.

In elementary school I got graded for silent reading. I always did well, always A’s. I never thought about how that grade came to be. Later I figured if I had moved my lips or had moved my head from line to line I’d have done poorly.

I remember the warm-up writing exercises for Palmer Method: the circles, the loops and the straight up and down lines. My circles were closer to squares. Sometimes I smeared my lines. The ribbon for Palmer Method always remained elusive.

In the seventh grade I was told a long held life fact. It was a non-nun year so I had a teacher. She was oldish, at least in my eyes. I remember trying to get one of the basketball hoops in the school yard for girls to use during recess. Many of us played CYO basketball for the parish so it made sense. That teacher told me no and wondered if I had my friend, a euphemism for getting my period, yet. I didn’t, but I also didn’t understand why that precluded us from playing basketball and told her so. She said once I got it I would understand. I never did.

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4 Comments on ““Above all, be the heroine of your life. Not the victim.” ”

  1. Bob Says:

    Hi Kat,

    Today was partly cloudy or sunny depending if you are a positive or negative person. The temperature rose to just 63°. Our next big rain event is predicted for Thursday.

    I only have three pairs of shoes today. Two pairs of black Oxford dress shoes and a pair of sneakers for wear on the weekends. My father started his careers in the retail shoe business and told me it was bad to wear the same pair of shoes everyday. I switch the dress shoes off everyday so that they can dry out and store them with cedar shoe trees to hold their shape.

    We learned cursive by practicing forming the letters rather than learning to make circles. I hated writing class because I’m a lefty and my teachers were too stupid to have me turn the paper in the correct direction for lefties. I had to learn to write by arching my hand over the top of the page and that smeared the letters. This was an especially messy when they requested us to buy a fountain pen. Hopefully, those are a thing of the past. The only thing I write cursive today is my signature. I either print or I type everything else. I don’t know why we waste elementary school kids time with an archaic skill like writing cursive.

    • katry Says:

      Hi Bob,
      It rained on and off though we did have a bit of sun and blue sky in the afternoon. It is below freezing now so I expect the rain will be turning to snow.

      I have several pairs of shoes from when I worked, but they are put away. I have 4 pairs of Converse sneakers, one I bought in the 70’s. I have a really old pair of Ugg’s perfect for winter. In the summer I wear sandals. I have one pair of boots from Timberland. They are also old. Luckily I don’t often go anywhere dressy or I would be out of luck for dressy shoes.

      We also practiced the letters but first we did the exercises. They were an introduction in some ways to the letters. I love fountain pens and have a couple.

      When I write, I use a combination of cursive and printing. In many schools, cursive is not taught. Kids can’t read it anymore.

      • Bob Says:

        I forgot to mention that I have a pair of slippers, for the downstairs portion of my house has wooden floors which get cold in the wintertime. These are my first pair of slippers since I was a kid.

      • katry Says:

        I think slippers should be in its own category. I also wear slippers around the house. I need to keep my feet warm.


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