Hole is dug and ready to pull in behind me

I met my friend Patty Barker to walk to junior high school.  One morning I left my lunch on her kitchen table, and when I retrieved it that afternoon her mother said “I felt for you, but I couldn’t reach you.” I love that quip. I believe the disappearing hole came into my repertoire about the same time. My dad said of a fellow engineer, “D’Arcangelo (they called each other by last names, very grown-up) is so tied up in this project he might as well have dug a hole and pulled it in after himself.”

I’m geared up for my annual accounting close marathon.  It doesn’t have to be a marathon, but it’s my close, I prefer it done and for ten years I’ve come up for air when it’s over. Some planets lined up with the asteroids this year, and I am taking Wednesday off. Thursday, too, if it snows all day.  Then the other me says I must have the framework of 2014 established, in the most un-“ intuitive” piece of software any geek could put together, by six pm next Wednesday, and I know those plows better be running Thursday or I’ll commandeer one.

The children have been on winter break these last two weeks; the school bus doesn't stop at the end of the street each morning and a fair number of library books have gone back and forth. Emily has met up with her Science Fair project partner several times over the semester and the two of them are using the break to finalize the project, due in a month. She also has a Spanish class project that assigned three students to be fashion editors and do a layout for a Spanish magazine. A fun project, it seems.

One girl could not come to the first session for reasons not given. I gave Emily some suggestions to complete the project, and she thought it would be fine after the three got together for the second work session. But that one was sabotaged by the same girl, who hosted, who had to leave in an hour with her family. I picked up a rather grim lipped Emily who told me she had done her part; the other two could put it together.

She and her Science Fair partner have worked diligently this semester on measuring arsenic in rice. I picked her up last weekend and made the usual inquiries. They are nearly done with their presentation, except their pictures. “Do you need a camera?” “No, I have one.” “Is something wrong with it?” “It’s in my locker. At school. Full of pictures.”

But the best lunch bag moment was from Hamilton.  Perhaps I mentioned his little sister no longer watches out for him. It didn’t occur to Hamilton to staple together his data sets for his Science Fair project. Of course they were mixed up, and the project stalled there.  Last weekend I asked how it was coming and heard his dilemma.  I knew his project involved a number of people taking a test. I suggested he try matching handwriting or else proposing some string theory result. He looked at Emily. “Matching could work,” she said. He looked at Emily harder. She looked away.

Today at lunch I asked how it was going. Well, in fact he had been thinking of starting that after lunch. I asked at supper how it went. “Perfectly,” he said.

There was a solution. Imagine that.

Laura’s project for the break? Rubber band bracelets. Almost beyond my comprehension.

Rubber Band Bracelet