I’m kicking off this post with a quote from a pope. I’ll bet that wasn’t what you expected when you showed up here today, and I hope you’ll bear with me. I’m going somewhere with this, and it has nothing to do with religion. Last Sunday at Mass, this line came up in the homily. [...]

Since we’ve been talking about college application essays, I might also add that Lulu wrote two application essays on Lemony Snicket. Apparently this was a bad idea, as she got wait-listed at both schools. Then again, one might assume that a school which wait-lists applicants who write essays on Lemony Snicket has a severe lack [...]

photo by Lulu When we last met here, I was tearing my hair out at the wait for Lulu’s college application results. I knew there might be a few restless nights of sleep involved, but I never imagined how much I would worry about the essay she’d written for her Common App. L. heard from [...]

It’s mid-March and a hellish time if you happen to be seventeen or eighteen years old and have applied to colleges. Some colleges have started sending out their acceptances and rejections, via email and sometimes letter. Most are coming in the next week or so. Meanwhile my girl waits, on the very precipice of the [...]

For years Chris has told me that we should hire a housecleaner. Before you read too much into that, it’s not that I’m a terrible housekeeper. I’m just, like everyone, busy. It’s also not that he is an unhelpful husband. No, I managed to marry one of those rare, neater-than-his-wife husbands, the sort of husband [...]

So, what do you do when you homeschool and you have a kid who doesn’t take to projects? Who loves to read and research and talk, but has utterly no interest in taking those ideas and making a model, or painting a picture, or crafting a handmade book? When you have a kid whose interests [...]