I know I said I’d write about reading in January, but once January arrived I could think of no better way to oust that Christmas tree from this page than with a photo of a journal. Everyone loves journals in January. That one right there is where I’m working on my MFA. I ordered this journal last [...]

Oh, December. It’s so hard to write a blog post in you. I’m itching to write about how my 14-year-old doesn’t like to read. Which isn’t entirely true–he reads all the time, just not in my traditional definition of reading. It would be fun to tease it apart here, but no one wants to read [...]

Oh, hi! You may be thinking, Where have you been, lady? And I would tell you that I’ve been spending time with my kids. Though not entirely as you might think. For one thing, I’ve been spending lots of time with H and Lulu in 1996. I’ve been taking this The Thirty-Minute Memoir course, and writing [...]

Oh, dear readers, I’ve been wanting to write here, but it’s been a bittersweet month. We had our girl home for the summer, which was wonderful. There was so much time for being with her, for cooking with her, for talking to her. (Spoiler alert: I wrote my next column for home/school/life entirely about talking [...]

Which is all well and glorious, these homeschooling days of wonder. But there are other days wracked with a whole different sort of wonder, particularly if you are a parent. Why can’t he write a paragraph by himself if schoolkids his age can? Should I push her to read instead of listening to audiobooks for [...]

I fly into Ohio on the redeye. I get to sit in the window seat, since I have no kids with me, and watch Lake Erie come into view, all misty in the dawn. It’s 6:15 a.m. when I land, and I have a morning to fill. I take the Red Line into downtown Cleveland, and drag my carry-on to the [...]