sleeping is...awesome!

After a few days of valiant fighting, I have finally succumbed to “el gripe.” Really, that just means I have a cold, but “gripe” sounds so much more dramatic, don’t you think? My wise and generous community has banished me to bed for TWO WHOLE DAYS. I thought a better solution would be to work it off. My plan was to take a fifteen minute snooze, then be back at it as good as new. Five hours later I woke up to MP bringing me lunch and I realized the sisters were probably right. Now that I’ve started sleeping, I can’t stop, it’s too glorious! My room is small and dark, my bed has a big dent in the mattress, giving it a lovely nest shape, and I have almost-but-not-quite too many blankets. The girls have no homework and the sisters aren’t teaching due to the transportation strike, so I’m not even shirking responsibilities. The girls can’t come bang on my door because they can’t even get in to the dorm where my room is. It’s like crawling back in to the womb for a few days, only better because I can leave Coldplay’s Parachutes on repeat all day long.

And now, randomly…some fun quotes!

Yesterday afternoon, Melody (5) and I were both sniffing and coughing and one of the girls sighed “oh how sweet, mother and daughter sick together”
“Melody, did I get you sick?” I teased
“noooooo”
“Well then who got us sick?”
Throwing her arms up and grinning proudly she shouted “Meeeee!”


Our youngest girls have an older girl who washes their clothes as part of her chores, but each one is at least responsible for her own socks and underwear. The other day I was taking our kindergartners out back to help them wash and Melody was swinging her tights around. As her wad of dirty clothes passed her own face she yelped, shook her head, and thrust her fist of laundry as far as she could away from her nose. Watching her blink in mute astonishment at the smell of her own dirty feet, I almost fell over laughing.
“Uh oh. Does that smell bad?”
“ahuh!” she nodded, eyes still wide.
“what does it smell like?”
“It smells like me!”

“You have to whip the tree in the springtime, otherwise it won’t bear fruit. That’s why, when I was in formation, the superior smacked each one of us after we finished whipping the avocado trees one day. So we would be fruitful.” –Hna. Aida