And I'm not so sad to see it go. Actually, I'll be happy for the routine again. Usually, Christmas break involves all the trappings that go with Christmas with your kid: basically, keeping the kid occupied and happy and avoid homicidal thoughts because the kid is out of his routine and therefore prone to bouts of behavior all designed to drive ( Read more... )

Is there anything more of a tightrope walk than the traditional parent-teacher conference week? For the uninitiated, it is an attempt to distill a student's academic standing in the span of 15 minutes or less while trying simultaneously to gauge the parent's reaction to what is, in effect, your judgment of their child's performance AND, ipso facto ( Read more... )

*phone rings ( Read more... )

Well, THAT was an interesting week ( Read more... )

Every year, it's the same: Day before school year starts, and I start worrying about the first day of school. It's a pretty sleepless night the night before, I get in there, close the door, and everything snaps right into place. It's like after being away from school for a lengthy period of time, I forget what I do for a living, then freak out ( Read more... )

Time to briefly stop the hands of time and figure out just where you've been. This entry comes a few days later than your 8th birthday because we were in Canada - a place you've often heard us talk about, but you have seldom seen. In a way, the whole trip was the perfect microcosm of you ( Read more... )

Ran into an old acquaintance today: Fear. Not just "Ahh! I didn't see that spider there!", but slowing-time-to-a-crawl-in-the-moment fear ( Read more... )

50th show. I wanted it to be special, a celebration, a ( Read more... )

My fellow ljers ( Read more... )

Nope. Not just a song. A whole friggin' album ( Read more... )