The Notebook

Last August my employer gave me a notebook to write my goals in for the upcoming school year.  Days later I found out that my goals were being decided for me by a higher power, and they had little to do with learning, and more to do with putting me in my place.
Instead of throwing the notebook away, I tore out the redundant goals and decided to find another use for the notebook.  Nine months later, I now have a notebook where every page is written on and, if you ignore the disappointing cover, has become a testament to how I have spent this time. So my last blog is the sharing of its contents.

 The first pages contain the phone numbers and addresses of all the hotels where I stayed on my road trip around the Balkans.  The photos and blogs of that trip remind me of all that was delightful and humorous, but the hotel info makes me relive the challenges of driving through new cities trying to find my way and a place to park.
Fortunately I was not alone, and my friends are really what made the whole trip possible. Sixteen hotels in over ten countries gave me the confidence to continue on my own.  
The next pages are what I learned from a group of ladies who meet in Sofia to study the Bible and support each other.  The words on the pages echo my gratitude for their wisdom and ongoing care.  We shared more than just coffee and cake together. We shared our lives.

My family is not completely absent from my notebook pages.  I do have the times of parent conferences recorded.  Fortunately there wasn't much need to meet with their teachers this year, other than to thank them for their help.  Next to the conference times is a recipe for Apple Pie. Copied from a website, it is the first of many attempts to improve my cooking skills while using ingredients that I could find locally.  Some where surprisingly popular with my family, like the pumpkin bread... or maybe they just ate it in respect for the amount of time I spent making it. Others were less so, like the Michaelmas Goose and the Wild Rice Soup.  I had to reuse them in another recipe in order to make them more edible.  My recipes for my home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner are right next to my notes on my visit to Sarajevo.  The words "Blood and Honey" right next to the "Cranberry Sauce".

The rest of my notebook is filled with my last blogs, the ones that needed to be written in my head, then written in long hand, and mulled over before publishing.  It became apparent that I now had too much to say, and the rambling needed to be edited, not so much for the reader, but for my own learning.  These last nine months have been all about learning and I do see the irony of using my misguided ex-employer's notebook to record this.   But I learned that when I am faced with empty pages and no topic, then I can be sure to fill them with the most delightful and satisfying lessons.
Eat, Laugh, and Learn  is my first blog started back in September.  The name had to be changed because of problems sharing it on Facebook.  Judging by this first post I have obviously learned a thing or two about blogging as well.