Word of the Week: Text

I’m actually rather late on the Word of the Week, hosted by Jocelyn at The Reading Residence . It’s intended to be a Friday prompt, but my Friday went down the tubes beginning at 8:00 am. In my experience, bloggers are a pretty forgiving group, so I’m hoping for leniency on this one.

My word for the week is

Missing my darlings as I do, texting is a lifeline. Thursday evening Oldest Sister and I “watched” the Olympics together, separated by 1,300 miles. We burned up the airwaves with our snarky comments, sarcastic asides, and our shock and sorrow at the painful events in men’s figure skating. Not quite as fun as sitting next to each other, but it had its own charm.

And then there was texting with the boy, who isn’t so far away physically but tends to completely remove himself from the family when he’s off at college. I sent him a few brief inquiries and words of mushy love and encouragement, and actually got some replies.

A text from Middle Sister at 8:00 am yesterday was what got my day off to a weird start. She was meant to be staying with her middle school-aged cousin (I won’t say “babysitting”…) and woke up quite ill, needing us to go pick her up and take over her duties.

Then I had my volunteer time at a nearby elementary school. Our schools have adopted a new reading curriculum this year, which means a boatload of “make them yourself” take home readers need to be copied and assembled. Teachers don’t have time for this task, and the aides that used to save the day have been seriously reduced in recent years. So I spent an hour and half cutting, folding, and stapling reading primers, with fascinating text on subjects like “Summer Olympics,” “The Math Mix-up” and “How to Make Your Own Snow Person.” It was quite pleasant being mindless and useful at the same time.

Finally, I’ve been working this week with my good friend and co-author, Bernadette, on a new book – getting the wording of the query letter just right and sorting out the text we’ve already written for the manuscript.

Hooray for text!