Becoming an Adult
Getting small children ready to play in the snow requires patience. Change your agenda for the moment because this is going to take some time. My child wriggles into her snowsuit, and then reports that her jeans are bunched up by her knees. I pull each pant leg down, digging up underneath her snowsuit and […]
Write Like A Jellyfish
Today, one of my favorite on-line communities, The High Calling, features my flair for the day. Enjoy the beginning of the post here, and please read more over at a great website that helps us deeply consider life, work, and faith. It’s the last day of the semester. I smooth out a new page, unzip […]
When Your Cat Looks Like a Skunk
My Skunk Kitty When you’re sick in bed, you have a lot of time to think about your life. You can have bizarre thoughts, brought on by fever and narcotics and the reality television shows you’ve been watching to pass the time. You start asking yourself if you’re dying, and you wonder what the whole […]
What You Have to Know
Typing Out My Flair Yesterday, I receive a sweet email from a wonderful 5th grader in another part of the country. She’s the amazing girl who owns her own business and announced, regarding her appearance, that “a face without freckles is like the sky without stars.” Her story appeared in an August blog post. This […]
Latkes, Menorahs, and the French Phrase that Might Change Your Life
I have a student who already has a career in bread and pastries. She’s a baker who works all through the night baking bread for local bakeries. She’ll rise at 2:30 AM, work all night, and report to my 10:00 AM class covered in flour. The smell of freshly baked bread precedes her and lingers […]
Layer Up
On a cold day like today, with temperatures below 20 degrees and a wind chill that takes your breath away, I have no choice but to face my day with layers. And I’m especially cold since I’ve barely recovered from my illness. With tights, long johns, knee-high pink socks, black boots, wool skirt, wool sweater, […]
How to Be Sick with Flair
All night long, a fever rages, and I can’t keep warm no matter what I do. I’m coughing so much that I actually lose my voice. I can’t talk on the phone; I can’t boss my family around; I can’t even go to church and call out my welcomes. I try to get out of […]
Stencil Me In
Snowman Pancake This morning, we invite some neighbors to join us for our Saturday Morning Pancakes. My artistic neighbor sees the pancakes and immediately makes a homemade stencil so we can decorate them. We relax, drink coffee, and decorate snowman pancakes in the chaos of powdered sugar and syrup. So there we are, eating our […]
Will Technology Destroy My Teaching?
This morning my daughter announces that her class is going on a field trip to the University Astronomy Lab. Her personal favorite planet is Jupiter. All day, I’ve been thinking about the wonder she’ll feel. These planetarium shows, according to the website, “feature spectacular astronomical images from the surface of Mars, to dusty nebulae, to […]
What You’ve Been Given
It’s officially winter here. Snow swirls up and settles, finally, on the land. But it’s the worst kind of snow because there’s not enough to do anything with it. But the neighborhood children, despite the lack of significant snow accumulation, still coax sleds down hills all afternoon. And they still make snowmen no matter […]