Friday, February 12, 2021

Friday poetry challenge: Winning odds (and evens)

In a week full of craziness and unexpected obstacles, on a day when the dryer-repair dude was afraid to drive on my road because of the snow so I had to drive out on those slick roads myself to spend time at the laundromat (not the greatest place for reading Lacan) and then go to campus for all kinds of meetings and then drive home up the same snowy driveway until my car slid gently sideways and got stuck halfway up so that I abandoned it and walked the rest of the way, leaving it where it sat and where it still sits so that I had to hitch a ride with my son this morning and arrived on campus before 6 a.m. (!) and will ride back with him this afternoon to spend the evening digging my car out--on that really crazy day I came out feeling like a winner.

Why? Because I am a winner! At our online campus Founders Day event yesterday, I won a drawing for a $25 gift card to Applebee's, which I will be happy to use when it's safe to eat indoors again. And then I was a winner again when I got home and found a package full of See's chocolates and fabulous toffee from an old friend in California. But mostly I am a winner because when my car slid sideways into the snowbank, my helpful son was on hand to help me move it out of harm's way and to drive me to campus today.

I still don't have a functioning dryer, and I'm still behind on my classwork because of all the ways the snow has slowed me down this week, and I'm definitely not driving to Jackson this weekend with even worse weather in the forecast, but I'm not going to think about those things this evening as I sit in my nice warm house and nibble on See's chocolates and reflect on all the ways I'm winning.

Snow, sleet, rain, and Arctic freeze;
c
hocolates, toffees, Applebee's.
Dryer death and laundry trouble;
hands that help out on the double.
Odds are trouble keeps appearing,
even when I need some cheering.
When the odd lines leave wheels spinning,
read the evens--now I'm winning.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

:)