Author’s Note: Back in January when New Year’s resolutions were all the rage, I set a goal for myself to write creatively once a month. I didn’t care if anyone read it, I just wanted to do it for me. I was successful during the months of February, March, and April, but then fell off the bandwagon. Over the weekend, I went to a writing symposium with my dad. There was a part of me that was not excited about…
I’m what some would call a morning person. Ideally, I like to witness the sun’s rising while my feet traverse a trail, relishing the quiet solitude. This personality trait also renders me useless by 8pm. Having used my last energy reserves to wrangle the kids to bed, I can barely muster enough energy to watch television. All of this makes my being here at this exercise dance class at 7pm on a school night a clear deviation from my norm….
My biggest reason for blogging (aside from an overly optimistic and definitely unrealistic desire to attain some level of fame) is to maintain at least some of the writing skill I developed in college. Some days the writing is easy and I find myself weeping over my keyboard at how beautiful my words are, but other days, like today, the words and ideas just don’t come together. My sentences are about as poetic as the bag of garbage I need…
It’s strange that a rope strung up between two trees could bring me such contentment. If the extraction of all the original clotheslines from pretty much every backyard in our neighborhood is any indicator, I certainly don’t think most people feel the same way. Or at least they’ve forgotten that they should feel that way. There’s just something about the simpleness of it. A row of sun bleached diapers fluttering in the breeze or a collection of Men’s pants almost…
Not only is my husband smart and good looking, but he is fluent in multiple different languages. Make that multiple computer languages. Pretty dreamy, huh? Seriously though, Noel has some crazy coding skills that he recently put to use on this here blog. We’ve been talking about giving the blog a makeover for awhile now and making it less of a mom blog. (No offense to mom blogs. It just didn’t seem fair to have Noel seem like a guest…
One of my favorite things about the internet is the plethora of free tutorials you can find. I’m glad that there are crafty people out there who like to share their creations, but am sometimes disappointed by their ability to relay information. (See, one more reason why you should take your English classes seriously đŸ˜‰ ) Sometimes when I’m in the middle of a tutorial and have read the instructions a million times and my eyes are tired from squinting…
Let’s be honest. I think about blogging a lot, more than is probably normal. I find myself composing as I fold laundry or drive the car. I jot down ideas on scratch paper and have a slew of drafts that I’ve lost interest in or never deemed publish-worthy. To be fair though I’ve been composing in my head for years now, even before the blog. I blame this on all the years I’ve dedicated to trying to become a writer….
The Poetry of Bad Weather Someone had propped a skateboard by the door of the classroom, to make quick his escape, come the bell. For it was February in Florida, the air of instruction thick with tanning butter. Why, my students wondered, did the great dead poets all live north of us? Was there nothing to do all winter there but pine for better weather? Had we a window, the class could keep an eye on the clock and yet…
This blog is old, like 97 in blog-years old. It was created using Moveable Type at a time when Blogger was barely a twinkle in Google’s eyes. The first post was published in 2003; Noel was living in the Alaskan bush and started the blog mostly out of sheer boredom. Since internet journaling wasn’t yet popular it wasn’t even called a blog, it was a weblog. When we got married I didn’t take any interest in the blog for a…
When I was doing my student teaching, one of my 9th graders asked me, “Merket, are we ever going to a read a story that isn’t depressing or about death and dismemberment?” As I honestly stopped to think about it I realized that there would only be one short story, “The Gift of the Magi,” and truthfully half of my students still found that story to be depressing.I’ve been thinking about writing lately. I’ve liked writing for a long time….