My last day of school was Friday. I've spent the past seven weeks very conflicted about today - the battle of exhaustion versus my desire to teach. I wasn't surprised to discover that I woke up this morning feeling a little lost soul-ish.

I spent the morning as a flitterbug --  popping from one task to the next without accomplishing much of ( Read more... )

I'm sure he's a very nice man, but I don't like him. At all. My dislike of him is rabid in a way I normally reserve for the Yankees. That commercial where he dons a wig and refers to himself in third person as "6'1", laser, rocket arm"… *gags*

So, on a year where Peyton was playing and my own dearest Tom wasn't, I was okay with anyone but ( Read more... )

I have a tendency to develop little routines. You could call them traditions - St. Matt calls them obsessions. But they’re just little habits that help me get stuff done.

For instance, I’ve listened to DMB’s “Dancing Nancies” on the first day of school for the past 13 years (since my sophomore year in HS). Before I serve in tennis, I have to bounce ( Read more... )

There are a few things I can depend upon in this world. The emphasis here is in things, not people. There are lots of people I can depend upon. This blog is about things. Well, about one thing in particular.

Coffee.

But lately I’ve experienced a new and rather scary phenomenon: #coffeefail. It has happened three times. **

Coffeefail -1: The time last ( Read more... )

I wanted to be a vet for a whole week when I was little. This career path followed right after my I’m-going-to-be-an-astronaut phase, which was curtailed after I tried to dress my infant brother in my Astronaut Cabbage Patch’s outfit: helmet and all.

The vet phase was also short lived. Lasting exactly as long as it took for me to discover that vets ( Read more... )

I have real avoidance issues with A.S. King’s Dust of 100 Dogs. I kept hearing the best things about the book, the buzz on the Internet is unbelievable, but still I hedged. And I know why I am dodging.

1) The title scares me. My first word was ‘dog.’ Actually, that’s a total lie. I don’t know what my first word was (makes a mental note to check), ( Read more... )

Valentine’s day, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways… but I’m stopping at 10, because then I need to get back to reading over my feedback group’s comments on FLASH.

In honor of <3 day, I decided to compose a list of the top ten things I love - at this moment - if you ask me tomorrow, you might get a few differences (especially if #1 has ( Read more... )

Today did not start off well. I was supposed to be able to ‘sleep in’ until 6:30 since today’s an in-service, not a regular school day.

Instead at 5:30 I woke up to ‘huruph blurph bleah’ and a warm lumpy wet splatter of doggie vomit. To make the situation even better, Bruschi decided to make amends for throwing up on me by covering my shocked and ( Read more... )

Both of these things are taking up much of my time and attention right now.   We are currently putting a major addition on our Victorian home and I am also in the last-last stages of revisions before sending out queries on my YA novel FLASH.

Both are wholly consuming in mind-trapping ways and cause you to focus on them to the exclusion of other less ( Read more... )