Bad News for Eeyore
I am linking an article I think Eeyore would hate: Better think positive: Pessimism can block therapy.
Even if completely accurate, I never understand how this sort of study can help ANYONE.
Lessons I take away from it: #1 If you don’t get well, maybe it is your fault because you are too negative. Don’t blame your doctor. #2 You need to trust your doctor or you won’t get better. #3 Your doctor may lie to you about what treatment he’s giving you so he can complete a study about this sort of thing. #4 That makes it hard to do #3. #5 Which also makes it hard to think positive.
The Word of the Day
Today’s Word of the Day email brought me great joy. It is always wonderful to find out there really is a word for something you knew there ought to be. And I am guessing I’m not the only homeschooler who needs this word. Or whose children could use some. 
sitzfleisch
MEANING:
noun:
1. The ability to sit through or tolerate something boring.
2. The ability to endure or persist in a task.ETYMOLOGY:
[From German Sitzfleisch, from sitzen (to sit) + Fleisch (flesh). Earliest documented use: Before 1930.NOTES:
Sitzfleisch is a fancy term for what’s commonly known as chair glue: the ability to sit still and get through the task at hand. It’s often the difference between, for example, an aspiring writer and a writer. Sometimes the word is used in the sense of the ability to sit out a problem — ignore it long enough in the hope it will go away.
Jack or Mrs Spratt?
Everytime I come past a restaurant advertising chicken wings I think about all those poor flightless chickens. And then I remind myself that this whole chicken wing thing is brilliant marketing of a part no one really wants. And that it enables the rest of us, who like to eat the real meat part of chickens, to get more of it.
The whole thing makes me feel like Jack Spratt. Here there are unfortunate people eating the wings part, like Mrs Spratt, while we get the good stuff.
I wonder if anyone likes both parts? So, please weigh in ~ are you: Jack Spratt; his wife; or ~ both? Not sure exactly what that would mean…
Flower Related Items
Miss Dog Lover gave me an amaryllis for Christmas, now fully in bloom.
Isn’t it splendid?
~~~
Talking about Miss Dog Lover and flowers reminds me. She put on hand cream in the car the other day and I asked what kind it is, I couldn’t place the smell. She said, “I think it is that pollen kind.” Wonder when Bath and Body will start marketing Pollen? Hayfever? Ragweed?
Old Janx Spirit and Snow Caps
I think it may just be a sign of the February-Homeschool-Blues that when Devastatingly Handsome asked if the Bananalets would be available to help shovel snow, my reply was, “I can give them work release.”
I have no idea why, but the whole thing is making me think of the ancient Orion mining song:
“Oh don’t give me no more of that Old Janx Spirit
No, don’t you give me no more of that Old Janx Spirit
For my head will fly, my tongue will lie, my eyes will fry and I may die
Won’t you pour me one more of that sinful Old Janx Spirit”
I need a tamed down version to get me through February. Maybe Coke would do.
~ ~ ~
The snow melt today was a bit unusual. I liked the way it melted on the rhododendron so it looks like they are wearing little peaked caps.
Toby