Screenprinting, math, and a little bit of happiness regained.

So, my wish has come true. As of Saturday, the 6th, my mom is home. She is doing really well, considering the damage to her heart tissue from the attack. She is on a lot of meds, and will be tired for a long time, and may have to have a defibrillator put into her chest in case she experiences the dangerous symptom of ventricular fibrillation, but she's ALIVE and that's what I hoped and prayed for so fervently last week. Now I just have to make sure Dad knows that he can't just feed her frozen dinners since she's supposed to rest and not do the cooking. He was going to give her one that had fifty one percent of the RDA for sodium when I was leaving on Sunday night. She's supposed to have only 2 grams total a day! Oh, well. It's a learning process for everyone...

On to summer school. Unfortunately, in order to get the required amount of credits I needed to get my student loan for the term, I had to enroll in two classes. No big deal, but it turns out that one of the only ones I could find that meets outside my work hours is a MATH class. I am an art student, and I haven't taken math since I was in tenth grade, back when Color Me Badd wanted to Sex You Up. I attended the first class last night, and I was pleased to find that I could understand what he was talking about to some degree. It is statistical math, with the supposition that you would be more likely to encounter the techniques in the real world (riiiiight). I now know, from one class, seven different ways to tally election votes, including the fact that poor Al Gore (I voted for you, man!) was indeed the Condorcet winner in 2000. And as for my studio art class, I am going to be learning how to screenprint, which is a long held desire of mine. It should be way more gratifying than ceramics, since I actually want to know how to do it. Hopefully I can get a project done in time to give it to Mom for her birthday at the end of this month. Even if I can't, I know this birthday, and the 43rd anniversary my parents are celebrating this Thursday, and every holiday for the forseeable future, will mean so much more because Mom might not have been there for them. Now, to keep all the promises I made to the Man Upstairs if he'd just help her get better.....

Happy Cat art by Paul Koh, courtesy Google Images.