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Waiting for the Future
A few weeks ago, my friend Christine got a crazy idea in her head. “Let’s take a few days off and take the kids to a waterpark,” she said to me. “It will be so much fun for them, and we’ll have each other. Let’s wait to tell them until the day we leave – imagine their faces!” Before Shawn died, I was always up for spontaneous things like this. But I’ve been more cautious in the past year and a half. However, when Christine proposed this idea, I said, “yes, that sounds like a great idea!” Maybe I was ready to be spontaneous again. We reserved a big hotel…
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The Girl at the Coffee Shop
Is there anything better than writing on a beautiful day at an outdoor coffee shop? Not for me. I love it. And I finally had a few free hours to do it the other day. I sipped my tea slowly and listened to the wind in the trees. The silence was broken abruptly by the woman sitting next to me. She was young – probably a college student – and she was talking really loudly. I went to put on my headphones. But then I paused. “I guess she posted the photo of her dad in hospital because she wanted everyone to know what was going on,” the young woman…
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How Did You Cope?
Three times a week, I pour out my emotions on this blog and I tell the world exactly what’s on my mind. Last year, I got a lot of texts/calls/emails from friends and family after certain blog posts. But lately, I’ve started to hear more from people I don’t know. I get messages from people who’ve read my articles and found my blog and want to connect. Sometimes I write back, and sometimes I don’t. (If you want to know who I don’t write back to, let me say this: my blog is not a dating site. Please do not write me and ask me to go on a date…
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The Oklahoma Clarks
I was upstairs packing last week, and I could hear Austin talking with a friend downstairs. “I can’t come over tomorrow because we’re going to see our cousins. We’re flying on a plane to Oklahoma!” Technically, we were traveling to see his second cousins. My cousin, Ellen, had moved with her family to Oklahoma a number of years ago and I’d never been to visit even though Ellen and I have always been really close. “Oklahoma?” everyone asked with skepticism when I mentioned I was going there. “What are you going to do there?” “I’m going to see my family,” I said. Was any other explanation needed? Everyone who has…
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Unaffected
Workplaces love surveys, don’t they? My school is a great place to work. As I’ve written about before, I get constant support from my colleagues, administrators and parents. I know I’m lucky to have this. So, recently, when I received a “employee satisfaction survey” I was happy to take it. I marked a lot of “extremely satisfied” and “definitely yes” answers. But then I got to this question, and I paused: “Are you able to present yourself each day in a way that is seen by our students as consistent and reliable (i.e., unaffected by outside-of-school problems)?” I didn’t have a hard time with the first part of the question,…
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Asparagus Cures Cancer
A few weeks ago, I got a private message on my blog. It was a letter from a reader who wanted me to know that she had used a special herbal remedy to cure her sister’s cancer, and it had worked. She implored me to spread the word about this herbal remedy since my own husband had died of cancer. Well, DAMN, I thought. Why didn’t I think of that? Herbs! I even have my own garden. And I actually grow herbs! Why didn’t I get Shawn to eat more of them? I posted this to Twitter and got a lot of responses. Oh, yes, there are many things other…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
