Monday, March 12

Having a hard time adjusting to the time change. Slow going to sleep last night, and late getting up this morning, around 8 a.m. After breakfast, I went to Mother's house to help her take a shower.

I was surprised to find that she had moved the clothes hampers, the adult potty chair, a stool, and a bath rug into the hall, and had cleaned the floor and a couple of wall shelves. I wasn't happy. If there was something more she wanted done after Daughter had cleaned the bathroom last Sunday, she should have let me or Hubbie do it. I'm afraid she'll fall, or twist her back, or something.

I threw a load of laundry into the washer, and fixed Ramen noodle soup for Mother's lunch, before I came back home.

I changed clothes and did a treadmill session and weights exercises. While I was doing this, Hubbie ran errands and got a haircut. By the time I was ready for the day, it nearly lunchtime.

After lunch, Hubbie accompanied Mother to our house, where she put together a dish of lasagna. Afterward, she continued working on her jigsaw puzzle.

I spent some time calling the members of our scrapbook club. One of the ladies was very talkative. So after she hung up, I didn't have as much time as usual to review the lesson for my ESL student. But it didn't matter, because we spent a lot of time in conversation before we began the lesson, and so covered only a part of the lesson.

Our conversation: I mentioned to her the incident of Granddaughter being robbed at gunpoint, which prompted her to say how dangerous Venezuela is. The homes in the wealthier parts of cities are secured with high walls topped with barbed wire, electronic gates, and watchmen.

Her aunt is a lawyer, who keeps valuables and cash in a safe in her home. At one point, my student went to visit her. The watchman was in the back part of the house, showering, and while he was there, a group of four men broke the electronic gate lock, and entered the home, while a fifth man waited in a get-away car.

All of the men had guns and threatened my student, her aunt, and her mother, if they did not give up their valuables. One of the men even held a gun to my student's head. They took all the cash...which was about $700 from my student, who had that much, because it was part of a payroll where she worked...plus everyone's jewelry, including my student's heirloom wedding ring.

Fortunately, they left after that without harming anyone.

In another incident, a gunman robbed my student in her car in own garage. The robber hoped to get the cash my student withdraw from her bank to be used on a trip she won to the Dominican Republic for being the highest producer as an insurance agent. But she had hidden the cash, her passport, her cell phone, and other valuables under the seat of her car, so that all the robber got was her purse.

No wonder my student is so happy to be away from that country, and to be living in our relatively quiet little town.

As for today's lesson, we covered sentences using when clauses: "When Carla calls, I will talk to her." Then she learned verb plus infinitive sentences: "I'll learn to speak English in this class." We also covered past participles of irregular verbs: "I sing a song. I sang a song. I have sung many songs."

We ended with her reading a story and then answering questions related to the story.

Back home, after our lasagna supper, Hubbie accompanied Mother back to her house. I turned the TV off then and gathered necessary materials for doing a couple of etched ornaments for the arts council director. Naturally, we couldn't find paper masks for protecting ourselves from etching cream fumes.

So Hubbie went to the WDCS to buy some. Since he was out, he ran several other errands, to the point I thought he wouldn't get back home while it was still daylight. We needed daylight so he could see to rinse the ornaments outdoors.

While he was gone, I used templates to cut letters from contact paper applied to the ornaments. When Hubbie finally returned, we finished the ornaments.

It was nearly 8 p.m. by this time. We finished the evening watching an old 1943 Alfred Hitchcock film, "Shadow of a Doubt." A young woman, who highly admires her uncle, discovers, when he comes for a visit, that he might be hiding a shadowy past.