I can not play the doldrums.

Coming up with a title can be hard.


I was first shooting for something related to Mardi Gras which is celebrated today. This is the last day before Lent begins in the Christian churches of the West, at any rate -- yesterday Lent began for the Eastern Orthodox Church. The dividing line for West and East, more or less, is the boundary between Greece and Turkey in the south or the Ural Mountains if you're Russian or significantly north of ... south. But back to Mardi Gras, the term itself is French for "Fat Tuesday" and I wanted to use a suitable synonym BUT I could see "Obese Tyr's Day" or some other permutation as detracting from the main purpose of my writing. (Why are Gregorian calendar months named from Latin and days of the week -- at least Tuesday through Friday, for Sunday is the Sun's Day and Monday is the Moon's Day and Saturday is from Saturn's Day, named for the Roman god of agriculture -- named from Norse gods, anyway?) We'll get back to that.


In any event, I couldn't say my daughter Sarah who turns eleven today is fat.


Last night while waiting for Martha to get home from Burger King with a Rubik's Cube for Sarah -- we already had one for the kids, but pretty much Jeffrey had taken it over -- I showed her a picture of herself the day before she turned four and she kindly asked me to delete it. (See above.) I couldn't bring myself to do that; besides, once I die or Facebook somehow gets word of my death I've set my Legacy Contact setting to delete my account. So unless we have hard copies of these photos or posts that members of our family find embarrassing, they will be kaput. Sometimes I feel like that is what everyone else in my house but me wants. Then we have days like this morning's parent-teacher conferences -- Sarah's last one at Longfellow with Mrs. Perrin for she'll start Ramstad Middle School next fall and Jeffrey's with Mrs. Evans. Both of them are doing very well; Jeffrey's teacher says he is being a great mentor helping other kids and Sarah's always the one with flourish!


We also saw on his drawn selfie that he wants to go somewhere with a beach, very soon.


Tonight after work -- I'm off last, so Martha and the kids will be home because she took the night off from Burger King -- we're taking Sarah to Applebee's for dinner. (I keep wanting to spell the restaurant's name Appleby's for a friend of mine from Stetson, darn it!) The four of us should enjoy that and tomorrow our own Lenten season begins. I know at least one thing we're giving up: eating out. We've done it a bit more than we ought with Martha on crutches, especially this weekend! And even though we've got many meal coupons from Sunday's silent auction at Bethany, at least those are free; if we don't have the cash for it, we won't go. But I did go to Goodwill before work and got my inspiration for today's title from Richard Benson's F In Exams (ISBN 9780811878319) which you've probably seen one or two of yourselves, answers SO wrong yet you can't help but laugh at what students come up with in the midst of brain freezes.


Today's title: Use the word "doldrums" in a sentence.


It's a good idea when you laugh out loud while reading to buy the book if you can or check it out if you can't. ("Summarize the major events of the Cold War. It started off by someone throwing an ice cream and them someone threw a popsicle back.") You might learn something; indeed, you might find more than one way of looking at a problem. ("Name a regular triangle. A three-sided triangle.") When the test-takers aren't trying to be silly ("What are the characteristics of crude oil? Coarse and rude.") there may be something to what they're saying in a flash of insight or desperation. ("Define enzyme. Superhero of the cell.") And don't we want to encourage the Sarahs and Jeffreys of the world to think outside the box more so than, maybe, the Davids and Marthas have been of late? They might see the answers to problems we have now, even if by our definition they are wrong. All that tablet time WILL be good for something!


Happy Birthday Sarah.


Dad