Last week was uneventful. Boring. Nothing blog-worthy.

A weekly blog is sort of on my weekly to-do list, but luckily for me, I have always known that a self-made to-do list can also be torn to pieces, and simply be allowed to perish in a trash bin. It is good to be my own boss, or so I thought.

“Mom! What happened to your blog last week?” 11-year-old.

“I didn’t write one. Nothing interesting happened last week.” me.

“Well, hurry up and write one! I need to make my $5 dollars.” 11-year-old demanded.

Note to self: don’t hire your own children to work for you. Especially the bossy one.

Now, I need to generate a blog to satisfy my money-hungry kid…

I racked my brain for 10 or 15 minutes and found a worthy blog material, and I meant “found”.

My 11-year-old’s 6th grade class had all sorts of interesting projects this school year, and their current one is a two-week daily journal from the perspective of an individual from an ancient civilization.

The students chose an ancient civilization, such as ancient Egypt, Greece, China, Rome, etc., and write journals as a member of that civilization in the ancient times.

My 6th grader chose Greece. While the instructions clearly specified that you are supposed to be a person from the ancient times, my child argued successfully to do this project as the Goddess of Wisdom, Athena.

So you wonder, just what does a Greek goddess put in her daily journal….

Below is my 6th grader’s first journal entry as the goddess Athena:

Athena in Greek

The sound of a calling horn pierced through the sunny morning and brought me out of my slumber. Seized with panic, I immediately bolted to my large, ornate bedroom window and leaned over the olive-green windowsill. “What’s wrong? What’s going on? What happened?” I shrieked at a nearby wood nymph. I knew her well; her name was Doila, and she lived in one of my sacred olive trees.

“I don’t know,” she said, quickly and excitedly. Her head popped out of a hollow in the tree, and her long, greenish hair flopped out and rested on the ground. “But I’ll find out.”

I watched, frozen with fear, an she chattered to the other nymphs, who had also been woken by the horn. What had happened? Was Dionysus so drunk that he had disappeared (again)? Had Artemis been hurt in a hunt of some sort? Did Apollo crash the sun chariot? Has Ares once again killed thousands of mortals by starting an unnecessary war? If he did, shouldn’t he have learned his lesson last time? Calling horns almost never meant anything good. I knew I had to report to my almighty father’s Great Hall soon.

Doila broke my train of thought by telling me, “Echalia said that Zeus is holding a meeting to decide a patron god for a city in Greece. It’s big and destined to be very important! And only someone as brilliant as you can patron a city like that!”

All my dread washed away, replaced by excitement. A patron god for a whole city? That was amazing! I wanted to be a patron god!

As I flew out the door of my Olympian palace, Doila sensed my eagerness to be a patron god and halted me. “…Athena? You aren’t looking very…patron god-ish…” She trailed off.

I examined myself. I was wearing a thin and revealing nightgown, which made me nearly toga-less. That may be okay for Aphrodite, but not for me. My hair was tangled, and I was barefoot. I haven’t fully washed off the olive oil that had been poured on my face when I won the trivia about Greece’s cities last night, and I was still very dirty from when some naughty satyrs threw mudballs at me. (Of course, I turned them into pretty little water dryads and let them be chased by their own kin, but that didn’t make me any cleaner.) Basically, I was filthy and unrecognizable, my father may not be very pleased to see me like this.

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