Welcome February!

February finally arrived, and did so today with some promise. Not the kind of promise of this gorgeous Oregon rose, which my husband and I saw last year when we traveled there, but promise there was, nonetheless.

The temperatures reached the mid-40s, the thick stalactites hanging from the roof outside began to crash or drip into oblivion as the ice quickly melted under the warming sun, and we both felt the giddy hope that spring is almost around the corner.

The best thing about February is that it's only 4 weeks long and in almost exactly four weeks, my husband and I take off to Puerto Rico for a well-deserved, and long-awaited break. In the meantime, I'm trying to stay on top of three classes and everything else I do on a daily basis, the bulk of which is work.

After battling a darned cold for a week, today I finally felt well enough to get to the gym and spent about 40 minutes (there's a lot of 4s in this post!) on the treadmill, which helped rev up my endorphins, putting me in a good enough mood to face the end of the day, when temperatures again will dip into the low 20s and everything that melted will refreeze into huge, slippery chunks of ice. Ugh.

Although January dragged on forever, it also went by in a blur of busy-ness, and I missed the second anniversary of this blog, which was born on January 21, 2007.

Meanwhile, as I get ready to settle down for the night to work on class prep and grading, my prayers and thoughts are at home, in Puerto Rico, where my dad and mom are going through a difficult moment because of my dad's frail health. This is one of those times when I wish I had a clone that I could send to Puerto Rico to help my mami, instead of having to stay all the way over in this middle-of-nowhere, hoping for better news with each phone call.

But, as I've learned with my own bouts of illness, when one can't do anything to change a situation, then all one can do is hand it over to God and pray and hope for the best. I'm definitely praying for better days to come.