Monday, Feb. 20

Today is President's Day. Hubbie hung our flag on the well house, and Mother's on a post of her front porch.

Up at 6:30 to get ready to go to water aerobics. Sunshiny morning, but it was cold enough last night to cause frost on the windows of the van. Hubbie scraped it off for me. As much as I love the sun, it blinded me when I tried to get out of my driveway. I couldn't see approaching traffic to the east, so I had to head in that direction and turn around in our neighbor's circular driveway.

The pool was delightfully warm today, and I thoroughly enjoyed my swim and aerobics. Back home, I went to Mother's house to help her take a shower, and then throw a load of laundry in the washer.

Once I was ready for the day, I reviewed the lesson plan for my ESL student. We met at our usual 2:30 hour. I started the session by drilling her on transforming sentences into questions using "which." The question words, "who, what, where, when, how, which, whose" are difficult for her to grasp in sentence transformation. She knows what the words mean, but she just can't seem to understand how to use them in sentence structure. We'll work on it until the light bulb goes off for her.

We began work on the English 3 book today. Lesson one teaches the use of past tense of irregular verbs. We touched on this a little in book 2, but she was introduced to new words today: sends/send; spend/spent; lends/lent; cuts/cut; puts/put; shuts/shut.

The lesson also deals with shopping and paying for food, and ordering from a restaurant. These were in the form of a story about shopping, at the end of which she answered questions. Ordering at a restaurant was in the form of a conversation between two people and a waitress. The student had no trouble understanding either of these exercises.

Back home, Hubbie had put the leftover chicken and rice casserole, as well as a dish of Lima beans, into the oven for our supper. He had also accompanied Mother to our house to join us in the meal.

I was a bit concerned about her. When I walked in, she was holding her head in her hand. I asked what was wrong, and she said she was having a dizzy spell. She recovered after a few minutes, but I wonder what caused it. If it happens again, I'm going to encourage her to see her doctor. She ate well at supper, even asking for a second helping, which is good.

After supper, Hubbie accompanied Mother back to her house. He said she seemed fine when she got there.

I turned the TV off at 6 p.m., and Hubbie helped me make a batch of decaf chai tea. Then he read his novel, while I worked this week's word search puzzle contest.

Back to TV, we watched an episode of "Downton Abbey." The daughter who tried to elope, was brought back home, and then finally received the blessing of her father to marry the man beneath her station, has now announced by letter that she is pregnant.

The staff member whose wife died under mysterious circumstances is now being tried for murder. Certain other staff members were called to testify for the prosecution, which puzzles them, since they are firmly in the corner of the accused. Their testimony manages to convince the jury of his guilt, and the judge sentences
him to death by hanging. Later, his sentence is commuted to life in prison. We viewers know, though, he is not guilty, so something has to happen to rectify this injustice.

The eldest daughter is faced with marrying a newspaper magnate, who blackmailed her into agreeing to marry him, because he knows that earlier, a visitor to the mansion, an Ottaman attche', seduced her, and then was found dead in her bed. Her mother and staff members removed the man from her room, but the newspaper magnate has nevertheless found out about it.

In tonight's episode, though, the father of this young woman has figured it all out, and has suggested she go to America, where the scandal, if it should be published in the newspaper, will not affect her.

Before that happens, though, her true love, the doctor's son, proposes marriage, and she accepts.

Meanwhile, one of the kitchen maids is miserable, because she was talked into marrying a returning soldier on his deathbed. The young man had been madly in love with the maid, but she did not return his love. Now she is receiving widow's benefits from the military and feels guilty. No amount of counseling from the other staff, and even from the young man's father, eases her misery. As a last resort, the staff drag out a Ouija board, upon which they make sure she receives a message from her dead husband, telling her to go live on his father's farm.

Now that things seem on an upswing, the servant's ball can and does go on. This event has the staff and the lord and lady's family intermingling in dining and dancing.

Downton Abbey is, of course, a form of soap opera. But even though we're not fans of daytime soaps, we're enjoying this nighttime British period drama series.