Back to School, 2020 Style

Posing with our Fancy Octopus craft and their Pointillism Paintings

This year, most kids I know are going back to school without actually going back to school. Here in western Washington, school districts are starting the year with 100% distance learning, with plans to adjust to part-time in-person learning as the situation with COVID evolves. My news feed is full of back-to-school pictures of a new style, with students sitting at kitchen tables or even tucked in bed.

But my kids won’t be distance learning. They’ll be in the classroom–which is what we now call our dining room. They’ll have an excellent student-to-teacher ratio–because their teacher will be me.

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Stay-at-Home

At first I said my life hadn’t changed.

I’m always home, I said.

OK:

There had been hours in the car and trips to the gas station, the grocery store, minutes and hours wandering aisles looking at nothing I needed. These had been wasted. I would not miss them.

There had been mornings alone in coffee shops, staring at blank pages and blinking cursors. Journal entries written in the front seat of my car in the parking lot, sketches made with my seat belt still buckled, the radio mumbling away the extra minutes I built into my schedule.

There had been waiting: for appointments, in lines, at traffic lights. An hour each Thursday, reading while my daughter danced ballet. An hour each Friday, a crossword completed while she sang.

These had been wasted. I would not miss them.

These had been lonely. Pointless.

Time spent with no budget:
staring at the mortar between bricks,
my pencil running over rough paper,
trying to capture the shadows
that would become darkness–a smear
of graphite next to a jotted phone number.

BUT:

These were the throw-away times. I would never miss them.

The Art of Trying (or, Why Yoda Was Wrong)

I hear it far too often:

Do, or do not. There is no try.

Yoda

Only it’s never coming from Master Yoda. It’s coming from some influential internet mom or from a fitness instructor or from somebody’s boss. It’s usually tinged with exasperation, from people who are tired of other people’s nonsense. People who say things like, “If I can do it, anyone can,” and truly believe that in their hearts. People who have a hard time looking directly at failure.

Goodbye Self-Care, Hello Self-Parenting

Four Things I Learned This Week

The US got its first female detective back in 1856, when Kate Warne walked into the Pinkerton Detective Agency and talked her way into a job.

The “Adam’s Apple” is cartilage that sits right on top of the thyroid. It grows bigger in men as their voices change and their voices grow bigger. Men and women both have this cartilage, and though it’s rarely as prominent as a man’s, some women do have Adam’s apples. (I finally looked this up because I’ve always said I had an Adam’s apple and I’ve always been laughed off. It might not be prominent, especially at my current weight, but yeah–I’ve got an Adam’s apple.)

There are hundreds of versions of the Cinderella story, one of the earliest of which comes from Greece. “Rhodopis” (Rosy Cheeks) tells the story of a Greek slave girl who marries the king of Greece after an eagle steals her sandal and drops it in his lap.

The Trade Federation’s Viceroy in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace is an alien species known as a Neimoidian. (My son is REALLY into Star Wars…)

Branding, Simplified.

One of my first attempts at a logo. Even the fox knows that lettering is crooked.

I’ve been back on the blog (and Facebook and Instagram) for a few months now, posting regularly, and a scary thing has happened: the spiders have found me.

Six Things I Learned This Week

There’s no solid agreement as to where the word “beagle” comes from. Some think it is derived from the Gaelic word “beag,” meaning “little,” while others think it comes from the French term for a hound’s hunting bark, which goes, “be’geule.”

The Resolution to Write: Starting Strong

Happy New Year!

It’s the first day of the year and the first day of your resolution to write in 2020. Hopefully, you’ve got that day-one excitement flowing through you, pushing you to hit your goals, making the first day feel exciting and, with any luck, easy.

Happy New Year from The Sensitive, Bookish Type!

I’ve always been an advocate of new beginnings. As many as you need. Pick up and start over. Sometimes more than once a day.