Update

Friday, I picked up a half-drilled seed pearl to replace the one that wasn't there on the pendant I bought at the rummage sale a week ago - I paid more for the pearl ($9) than I paid for the piece ($1), but the meticulous match told me the three already there are very nice pearls indeed. Add this to the two diamonds I identified and it means that, marked or not, the thing is gold.

Pickings were slim this Saturday, though, at least where I checked - the first week of three that it sucked, but since the other two were spectacular I just can't work up a good give-a-crap. Next is Memorial Day weekend, which can mean anything around here.

I worked some long hours Sunday, and I'm paying the price today - a cold I've been fighting for weeks finally ran me over like a Mack truck, with all the horns, bells and whistles playing their gritty tunes in my head, throat, and chest. One of these days, maybe, I'll get a good night's sleep.

Won't be this week, though. I'm babysitting the Electric Kid for several days, each one ending in tutorials and night classes. We (mostly the Big Lug) watched Princess last night, too, because Head Trip's boyfriend is in ICU - with extremely elevated blood sugar and dehydration, among other things. He was laid off last year and has no insurance, so he let it get nearly to the killing point - he has pride, and he believes in working for a living, not riding the government gravy train. Though I'm not for socialized medicine (I know too many Brits) I know we really must do something, and soon. (On a side note, it was a "wake-up call" for my daughter, who's fought her weight for years - maybe the Big Lug will see it that way, too ... the timing is kind of weird for it, though, isn't it?)

For now, however, I don't have the energy to fight. I didn't think I even had the energy to write, but I did. Now I'm headed to the shower, then to help some students who are struggling with the material (ACT math), then to work with another (far from here) and afterward hit Walmart for a pastel-colored bandanna I remember seeing one day. (I use handkerchiefs to shield my morning pages from the oils on my hand so the colored gel pens I write with will actually stick to the page - yes, and I color-coordinate the bandannas with the covers of the composition books I use ... I am the ultimate geek.) I can only hope that tonight I won't have a walnut-sized sandpaper patch in my throat to keep me awake and coughing. And I can pray that by Thursday I'll have at least one happy-ending story to tell.