Warming To A Teacher

An apple is the quintessential approach to influencing teachers since, I believe, the era of Aristotle.

With this in mind, I received many apple-related gifts when I was teaching elementary school. Most I eventually discarded, but I did end up with an extensive apple collection. I added my own apples to it as the years went by.

As I prepared to move from Maryland to Arizona, I whittled the collection down to my very favorites.

Here, in the foreground is a Waterford crystal apple. The smaller apple is a Swavorski crystal. The red one in the background is stained marble and the clear one is simply bubbled glass.

Although I have less than ten remaining, they are frequent reminders of the wonderful times I had with my students over the years and the rewarding experience and honor it was to be a teacher.

I wouldn't have traded a bit of it for anything in the world.


Good news on the health front. I saw my nephrologist and my kidneys continue to be stable in the lower stage 3 range. All of my labs were in the normal range. Woot Woot!

The dietician gave me a little leeway for the holidays. Rather than eating bags full of Twizzlers, she'd rather me eat mom's traditional date/fig cookies. At least they are nutritious. On the other hand, she cracked down on my sodium intake and is making me record all of my food on a special website that calculates all of the nutritional information critical to my kidney health. One more reason to stay on the computer for hours a day.