Slice of Life

    • City spirits

      Sitting at the stop lightDreadingthe long commute home I look across the streetinto the darkwindow of the car facing mebored To pass the time, I imaginethe driver of the white horseless carriageas an opponent to be crushed Who will win the intersection face off The light turns greenI inch ahead…

    • Joyful work

      It’s been about seven years since I’ve had my own classroom and I’ve missed it since the first day I stepped away. This semester I have the joy of working with a small group of second graders in an after school literacy program. We are working on a fantasy writing…

    • Progress over perfection

      During the March SOL Challenge, I was inspired to take up yet another new hobby. My kit finally came yesterday! When I purchased this kit, I imagined myself in a scene of Bridgerton, sitting by the fire embroidering, while my husband played on the pianoforte. I look more like Mr.…

    • Thank you for the feedback

      I have to confess that I may be a little addicted to getting feedback from ChatGPT. I use AI assistance to check my grammar, when I remember. I’m notorious for skipping words in my sentences. Gestalt theory prevents me from seeing it until it’s too late. I always prompt the…

    • Crash!

      It started out as a beautiful Sunday morning. The sun was shining through the big, cotton-candy clouds, while a sprinkling of raindrops continued to fall—a confusing but whimsical weather occurrence. It wasn’t wet enough to keep us from riding our bikes to the Breakfast Burrito Club meeting spot just a…

    • Outsourcing your life

      Yesterday, a team of fifth-grade teachers shared a humorous, but also disheartening story of one of their student’s using AI to complete a writing assignment. All of us had heard of this happening in middle and high school, but hadn’t encountered it in elementary school until now. Then this morning,…

    • Soccer family

      I’ve been in my kids’ lives since they were 10 and 11 years old. When they were younger, they both played soccer, mostly on different teams. This meant that many weekends were spent running from one field to the next, or splitting up soccer parent duties with one of us…

    • City wildlife

      It’s been a long day and the thing that is bringing me some joy is thinking about a couple of special encounters with nature that we don’t always get as city folk. The coyote below has been spotted a few times in the last couple of weeks actually. Ginger, our…

    • What’s in a name

      A while back, a friend told me about a podcast, Couch to 80K, which is a free 8-week fiction writing course. Each episode consists of a 10-minute exercise that you complete while listening to the podcast itself. I stashed it away for future me, but today I was stuck (again)…

    • A crafting journey

      I used to be a stamper, but email and e-cards became too easy. I used to be a scrapbooker, but all of my photos got stuck in my phone or computer. I used to be a quilter, but I was frustrated by fractions. (When they say “quarter-inch” they mean it!)…