1. The wind chill continues to unrelentingly freeze the greater Greenbelt suburbatropolitan area and I am just not the hardy soul I used to be and so I hunkered in all day, doing laundry, cooking, and continuing the kind of reading I've mentioned in this blog the last couple of days.
2. The Deke and I need hot soup -- not just temperature hot, but peppery hot. Today I put together our Ninja food blender and after I sauteed a couple of onions, cooked down some cauliflower, broccoli, and celery, I put the contents in the blander, returned it to the soup pot, and added coconut milk and some red wine vinegar. I seasoned the onions while they sauteed with pepper, cumin, garlic powder, tumeric, salt, and red pepper flakes and the end result was a soup that I, at first, thought was too hot -- but it wasn't. The Deke and I are both fighting colds and the chill outside our apartment home and the soup was perfect.
3. This evening, I listened as the Deke talked (did not complain) at length about the challenges of her job and, that despite all the difficulties, how glad she is to have moved so far out of the comfort of Charlemagne into a school that is not only challenging her professionally, but on a deeply personal level as well. She has never worked, or studied, or done anything in an overwhelmingly African-American environment before (I never have) and it's demanding for a variety of reasons, many that go way beyond the fact that this particular third grade group is (and has been since kindergarten) a behavior problem for everyone. I don't have a firm enough grip on how to talk about these challenges to write about them and I'm not sure it's my place to do so. I admire the Deke's determination to learn, to serve her students, and to talk with me about her work, about this move we've made.
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