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Opinions on Kinetic Sand
The other day, Tommy got out his kinetic sand and played with it for hours at the dining room table. When he was done he cleaned it up. For those of you with young children, you know that “cleaning up” kinetic sand is just like cleaning up real sand, except that it is also neon and somehow sticks to surfaces even worse than the real thing. “This stuff is terrible,” Chris said, as he tried to scrape little bits of it out of the crevices of the table. “I know,” I said. “I don’t even know why we have it except that Tommy loves it.” We joked about what kind…
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Ask a Widow: Is This a Good Idea?
My “Ask a Widow” column was really just an experiment when I started it over a year ago. Did people actually want my advice? Wasn’t this blog supposed to just be about my life? But the questions came in – slowly at first, and then in increasing numbers as time went on. I heard from widows who just wanted to vent and non-widows who were trying to connect with widows and all sorts of people who couldn’t figure out what to do about parenting or work or finding love again. Sometimes the people who wrote me just wanted some hope (“please tell me if gets easier!”) but other times they…
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Guess Random Numbers
Every night at dinner, we do highs and lows. Last week, Tommy had a big low, and we all talked about it. That day, he had a math assessment. He’s in first grade, so this assessment didn’t seem too difficult. He just had to do basic subtraction. But he struggled, and we could hear him sigh – and then cry – from the dining room table where he does virtual school. We texted his teacher about it, and she was kind and loving and gave us some strategies to help him. We tried to encourage him and he finally finished and felt relatively accomplished. We were glad he persevered through…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
