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1/19/1999 Angel Unaware3:18 p.m. In a half hour we'll be leaving to pick up Daniel at kindergarten, and I haven't accomplished nearly as much as I would have liked; all I've done are those annoying things that have to be done on a daily or weekly basis: the usual driving to and from Daniel's school and the university; dishes, of course; poaching chicken for tonight's dinner, using up over-ripe bananas in a banana cream pie; taking the twins for a walk, making them lunch, and putting them up for a nap. I haven't even done the other housework chores I had planned, vacuuming the downstairs and mopping the kitchen floor. Forget about the quick power nap I'd hope to take (I was up until 3 last night finishing the file translation project.) I hate housework, not just because the work itself is tedious, but at the end of all that drudgery, I have nothing to show for it. The dishes are clean and the floors are vacuumed...so what? In a few hours there will be more dirty dishes to wash and in a few days the floors will need to be vacuumed again. Perhaps there are people who can take pleasure in housework; to me, it will always seem like an exercise in futility. Oh, yes.... I also picked up Sarah at the Hyatt around 11 this morning. She's finally back after a trip complicated by weather difficulties both coming and going. On the way back she mentioned she has signed up for two courses at the community college. I asked if she was able to register as a county resident since she has only been living at Nana's less than a month. She then told me the story of her "angel." She had tried to register at the college, but was told she'd have to pay the out-of-state tuition; the total for the two courses she wanted to take amounted to over $1000, more than twice the tuition for county residents. Disappointed, she decided she'd have to wait until fall, by which time she would have saved the money from her job at the diner. She was telling one of the other waitresses about her predicament, when a customer seated at the counter spoke up. He said he worked in the registrar's office at the college and offered to help. He took her name and number and promised to call her. Sarah gave him the info, but secretly wondered if he was just playing some sort of joke. There are hundreds of restaurants in this densely populated county of a densely populated state. What were the odds that someone from that college's registrar's office just happened to be at the diner where she worked just in time to overhear her? The next morning at 7 a.m. the guy called her. He said, "In a few minutes, the Dean of Admissions will be calling you. I've told him I know your grandmother, and he's going to offer to let you attend as a county resident." So Sarah is now signed up for two classes at the county resident rate. "I think he was an angel," Sarah said, half seriously. "I went into the kitchen for a moment and when I came out he was gone." Life can be full of happy accidents and surprising coincidences.
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