Honey Nut Cheerios

OK, so this metaphor might be a reach … I am not even sure where I am going to go with it, but it just popped into my head, and I am going to see if it turns into anything. As I am scrolling my posts from this month, my first year participating in the

Waves

Our youngest, almost eight, is sitting next to me. He’s in a nest next to our bed: piles of blankets, a sleeping bag, pillows, his stuffed dog (fur matted from years and years of love and lots of spins in the washing machine). Normally, E would be asleep by now, but he’s busy filling the

Scattered

I have had infinite notebooks, portfolios, apps, plans for organizing myself. I am forever trying to build a structure to contain my fractured, fly-away ideas, my pinball mind, my slippery, slip-away thoughts. If I don’t write it down, I will lose it. If I write it down, I will likely lose it anyway: a scrap

Missing Pieces

Today was hours and hours of planning as I see the finish line in the not-so-distant future. Planning the remaining eight weeks is like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle without all of the pieces (e.g., we don’t know yet if we will be administering standardized tests and, if so, if it will be

Abecedarian

Last summer, I took part in the Book Love Foundation Summer Book Club (HIGHLY recommend), and one of the books we studied and explored was Dictionary for a Better World by Irene Latham and Charles Walters. These two poets wrote and assembled an incredible collection of poems, short narratives, and quotes, all of which speak

Counting Toward Home

6:30AM watch alarm 6:32AM back-up phone alarm 1 pot of coffee 3 under-the-bed checks for left-behind socks, chargers, books 5 bikes jigsawed onto the rack 8:24 AM departure 5 stops: doughnuts, gas/sandwiches/coffee/restroom, pizza/snacks/restroom, gas/restroom 4 weather shifts: cloudy to drizzly to snowy to rainy to cloudy 2 mountain passes 1/5 of Harry Potter and the

Drive

A blanket of clouds and the promise of a cool, windy day convinced us to abandon a hike for a drive. We prepped for offline entertainment in case the hours in the car were too much for our kids—we downloaded Harry Potter on Audible and Hamilton on Spotify—we stocked up on snacks, packed books and

Island in the Sky

Yesterday, we put in a cumulative 5.5 miles of trails, so as we planned out our hiking for the day, we decided to go for a longer walk. As we scanned the national park map (a lovely “throwback” to a real, rather than virtual, newspaper) and the trail descriptions, I felt a little twinge that

Home Away from Home

Utah is beautiful: layers of rock and sand that have been shaped over hundreds of millions of years, first beneath an ocean and then sculpted by rivers and wind. The colors, seemingly straightforward, are nuanced and varied: the differences in reds and yellows and browns and greens are astounding. We walked in the shadow of

Disruption

I am always astonished at how quickly the landscape shifts, how completely different the soil, the rocks, the air, the water, the flora, the fauna, can vary from one moment to the next, how the interactions between these elements can take so many forms and create such different outcomes.  Like most people, we have been