Urgent things, gallons of paint and remembering a teacher.
Sunday, 10.26.2014 - 6:40 pm.

The landslide is fast approaching, or maybe it's happening already. My parents are coming in a week and a half(!) and Andrew and I take the GRE the day before that. The wedding is in two weeks and we still have some details to sort out. We're a little behind on our applications to US doctorate programs, most of which have a december 1st deadline.

Instead of making progress in any of those things, Andrew decided to paint the apartment this weekend. True, we've been putting it off for a long, long time, but whyyyy now?! Well, he'll tell you, he wants to make a good impression on my parents. Which is true, so aaaaawww.

But it's still frustrating. I wish we'd spent this weekend on more urgent things. I didn't have a say in it, he didn't ask, he just said, we're painting this weekend. That didn't bother me because he acted accordingly: he took care of most of it. He'd actually had hired an acquaintance to do it so neither of us would move a finger but that sucker didn't show up. So we both had to get to it yesterday. Which was great, actually, it was just the two of us working and time went fast while we chatted.

He called a friend (who's like a little brother to him) for help today so it's been most of them working while I study. Because, as the writing in this diary from my teenage years can testify, I suck at math. I need to study for the GRE and I can only do it on weekends.

I've been remembering my middle and high school days of failing math. It always happened around this time of year, when the school year was coming to an end. They were good days though: sunny and windy days, studying with friends (and ocassionally crushes), and crossing my fingers to pass the course so I could go see Brother #1 and his family in the US for the holidays. Good times indeed.

Speaking of high school, I learned my english teacher passed away a few days ago. She was pretty much a symbol of my school, she taught there for generations. She was a very elegant lady and her class was really fun (in retrospective, anyway). To this day, old classmates recall "the verb list": thousands of verbs, regular and irregular; it was a source of anxiety but it proved useful in the long run. Everybody learned english thanks to her. Well, I'd learned before her class thanks to Aerosmith and Disney movies, mostly, and I'd skip her class to go have coffee with a teacher/friend, good old Fidel, but she provided formal knowledge of the language. She knew I knew and praised me for it and encouraged me to keep learning. Bless her heart. May she rest in peace.

Anyway...the apartment looks gorgeous. Such a handyman, that Andrew. And they're almost done so I'll go help clean up. See you soon!

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