What the heck is sangfroide? It came to me on my walk the other day, I wrote it down in my little notebook.

"self-possession or imperturbability especially under strain" says Miriam Webster online, with "equanimity" as synonym.

I could write an essay on my need for that quality, especially 6th period with the new feral ninth graders. But I promised I wouldn't write about my teaching residency on this website since kids might google me and find it and hear and mess with me because of what I say here.

I have pink eye! Conjunctivitis! Wow! It sounds pretty but is goopy and droopy in actuality. I look my age! My left eye nearly smeared shut with goo yesterday when I drove directly from school to a free clinic in Klamath Falls 30 miles away (the clinic is on the other side of town - if it had been by the library it would have been a scant 26 miles away.) I drove directly into the sun for part of the trip, mainly the part where I was driving along Main Street looking for the clinic and barely making out the traffic signal lights for glare and eye-squinting. At the Fred Meyer to get my prescription filled the pharmacy guys kept paging me back to the counter. My insurance company claims the prescription benefit ran out in March. We didn't have this coverage until March. I paid and took the receipt, wanting to get the first two drops of magic elixer into my eye with no further to-do. Since I am here in Chiloquin with no family or intimates from home, I entered the house and regressed to six years old. I wanted cinnamon toast and old movies on TV. I made myself salmon from the Fred Meyer and a cheddar quesadilla and opened the new bottle of Australian Malbec, which was the first bottle of decent red wine I've purchased since coming here. Anything on the satellite TV that looked good was something my satellite subscription doesn't cover. My (inherited, purchased by my landlord and actually a gift not a right) satellite coverage covers only heavily advertising-laden or Christ-filled or infomercial fare. I pressed one channel that said "Fabulous Boot" thinking it might be a movie, perhaps a sequel to Das Boot? and a woman's voice accompanied by a hand fondling a fur-lined shortie boot came into view. The boot was ugly and in an ugly shade of anemic taupe or I might have continued watching.

The light dims here in the community center - the curator has gone home and locked the doors, so I am deliciously by myself in the space, which never happens so that I am loathe to leave as the protagonist in The Piano Tuner might be wont to remark. Really, I am more 19th century than 21st except for the under and outerwear.