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Excellence in Mediocrity
Recently the opportunity was put before me to have a presence in an on-campus teaching setting. I thought about it, I really did. I imagined getting to know students, the environment I’d try to foster, the potential to invest in young people. I even went so far as to consider whether I’d allow music in the lab and if I’d show up with cookies — I’m truly embarrassed now for disclosing that last bit. And then, before I had…
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Deep Winter
It is deep winter, or as deep as it gets in the Piedmont, and yesterday we got a strange yet wonderful lag in the cold after a week of no school. We drove off to a location not far out of town, a future park development site Joe wanted to visit. We arrived and walked down an old two-lane road, half grown over with the encroaching forest floor and recently blanketed in ice, giving way to sun and slush. The…
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Little Thought for the Morning
With social media, there’s a trend to announce convictions and lifestyle changes, whether it’s the choice to wear leggings, the tv shows we allow our children to watch, the stores where we will no longer shop, the foods we will no longer eat, the drinks we will partake in, how we exercise, discipline our kids, etc. You get the picture. Even when I agree with these, I often find myself getting defensive, thinking of snarky responses or feeling inadequate that…
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Piles on Piles
I’ve been working my way through the house attempting to put it back on its feet after several years of toddlerdom and a lifelong habit of saving every little thing. There’s a front room in the house that has amazing potential yet it often finds itself in the cross hairs of multiple hobbies, a litter box and hoards of preschool projects. It is the first room people see when they walk in the door and it currently looks like it…
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Working from Home with Kids Part 1
In the final stretch of my PhD program, I traveled to Portland for an annual conference. I’d been married just under three years, and earlier in the week, Joe and I rafted down the White Salmon River, during which I had a near death experience. It was an anxiety ridden week, because on top of almost dying, I had applied for tenure-track positions in my department and at another university, and everyone who had anything to do with my potentially being hired…
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Big Wheels Peace Accord
This morning I’m sitting on the couch, drinking coffee, and listening to the boys upstairs playing with some new action figures. The tension between the two of them has been through the roof the past couple weeks, so hearing them playing together does my heart good. Sometimes the struggle of parenthood is managing to equip children with conflict resolution tools while the bullets are flying… at each other and at you as the parent. Sometimes I succumb to the chaos…
