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 [...]

I turned fifty last week. An old high school acquaintance wrote on my Facebook wall, “It’s just a number.” To make me feel better, I guess. But I don’t feel bad about turning fifty. I feel excited, to be honest. When you’re in your late forties (or thirties or twenties, for that matter), you’re creaking [...]

I fully realize that reflections on the writing process can be fascinating reading for writers–and dull as tax documents for non-writers. I also realize that over the years I’ve acquired a readership made up largely of homeschoolers, and that I’m not necessarily writing much about homeschooling here these days. Which is to say that the post that [...]