Go for it, JZ. Mention the high-ranking Jesuit University in town and how they give 8 weeks maternity leave. They love those comparisons.

Just got an email from a student asking me to change his grade. Once again, no good reason given, just asking.

Reply that you will change it by dropping it a point. And will do so upon every subsequent request.

Hell, you should have that on a sign somewhere in the classroom.

I don't know what it is about the onset of summer that makes me break out the Mary Chapin Carpenter, especially given that her music is generally so quiet and introspective, but without fail, the temps rise, out comes Chapin. I've been happily wallowing in time*sex*love* all morning.

Seska -- all the ma~~~ you need.

JZ -- do it. Seriously, I can complain all I want , but I am a heathen. It needs to come from inside. Complain for the future

I'm so tired that I read that as "Batman."

Me too.

Matilda, in breaking news - still insanely adorable.

Meanwhile, in the world of me (and I apologise for the juxtaposition with the remark about Matilda's adorability), my grandmother just died.

Have cried quite a lot, and am feeling weird and headachey and head-go-boom. But in a happy quirk of fate, my wee sister and I were chatting in gmail about the whole thing when we got my mum's email, so we were kind of together when we got the news, despite being on different continents. (She's going to try to do a eulogy thing - there is no fucking way I could do that, given that I cry whilst reading 'Mr Wolf's Pancakes', ffs...in spite of which it struck me that it would be very, very apt to dig out my grandfather's poetry book, which I inherited, and which had a bookmark stuck into a page with a poem named 'Mabel' - I've assumed that it was put there by him, since he was utterly and totally besotted with his Mabel, by all accounts. I mean, so besotted that some 30 years after his death, one of the guys who was in his batallion in WWII showed up at my grandmother's door and said: "Are you Tom's Mabel?" and she was all "????" and he said "Hi - I was just passing through your town, and I had to stop by and pay my respects. Tom was such a wonderful bloke, and he spent the whole War talking about how much he adored you - we all felt like we knew you!"

Apparently he spent all day every day singing too, so I get that from him.

Anyway, yes - she's dead. And although I've never been at all close to her, I'm still feeling slightly wrecked.

And, sorry - I was saying about the poem. I think it would be nice to read it, in a kind of from him way, even though I never knew him (he died when my mum was 17). But I think I'd probably be a basket case. But still - maybe ought to try.

Fuck.

Mortality: it kind of sucks, eh?

{{Fay}}

Family is messy, weird, and hard; even more so when death gets in the picture. ~ma for you and your family, especially your mother.

Oh, Fay. I'm so sorry, honey.

Mortality: it kind of sucks, eh?

In the wise words of Curly of the Three Stooges: "I don't wanna die! There's no future in it!"

I'm sorry, Fay. Losing family, even cantankerous family, tears something of the fabric of life apart.

{{{Fay}}}

{{{Fay}}}