This year Santa (who addresses packages in my dad's handwriting) got me some really nice stuff. Good wool socks, for one. My slippers are a bit big for me, and do not always keep up with me if I am moving quickly. Hopefully these will not collect holes in the heels as quickly as previous socks of mine have. I guess the continual wear and tear of the carpet was just too much for them.

Santa also got me Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson and The Road Not Taken and Other Poems of Robert Frost. I am charging ahead in my quest to become a pale, cultured ninny who can quote more Shakespeare than Shakespeare could.

I have yet to look at the Robert Frost, but Emily Dickinson is very nice, though she must have had some peculiar psychological quirks. Apparently born in 1830, she attened college then moved back to her father's house and rarely descended from her room for the next thirty five years or so, when she dided at age fifty five in 1886 (must have been before her birthday, or else the numbers do not work). Only six of her poems were published during her life -- in 1862 four of her poems were rejected by The Atlantic Monthly and she believed the public would not care for her poetry. I rather like it however, especially this short piece, describing the sea

An everwhere of silver,
With ropes of sand
To keep it from effacing
The track called land.

Dear papa, he did very well this year. A book on lighthouses, and several Russian cds, all of which I am enjoying! And from Mum, jelly beans and a lighthouse calendar, and a delightful book of modern fables from Grandma and Grandpa, and of course my exciting new alarm clock from Granny! And, also, peanut brittle from my little sis, which is a good source of sugar if there ever was one.

Now, I am attempting to stay on a schedule, so needs be I go to sleep fairly soon. In the morning I need to get around to calling people if I am going to have a party of any sort, for my birthday, or New Year's, or both, or something. And I need to research some Old or Middle English, or whatever it is Chaucer wrote in, and also work on planning how I will be teaching 6th graders (6th graders!) some Russian.

I am rather frightened of teaching 6th graders, they won't be much smaller than me, chances are some of them will be bigger than me. I am, after all, only five foot four, which is not tiny, but still rather smaller than a lot of people. It is definitely smaller than most of the guys I know, who are all obscene heights like six foot one. My mother finds my height reassuring -- at five foot five, she is no longer the family midget.

Wait! I am going to sleep now...