January 29, 2024

Unsubscribe

I’ve been on an unsubscribe tear lately, removing all the detritus that piles up in my inbox daily and feels harmless (delete here, delete there, delete everyfuckingwhere) but, before you know it, adds up to a significant amount of time and hassle. Who wants to wade through 35 emails from companies trying to sell you the same thing they tried to sell you this morning and yesterday and every day for the eight weeks prior to find the one important email you need to see? I’ve missed timely communications because they’ve been buried in trash. Seriously, DSW, sending me six emails a day does NOT make me want to buy more shoes from you. It just makes me want to burn down whatever building your idiotic marcomm staff work in. And Lululemon, you have my entire sales history. How many leggings does one bipedal need?

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December 29, 2023

23…24…

I’ve been so busy working on year-end stuff, including getting Zoe ready for two weeks in South Africa, that I haven’t had time to sit down and reflect on the closing year, nor on what my goals might be for the coming year. 

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October 29, 2023

Out of the Shadows, Finally

When I was in grade school and middle school, I collected cats. Not the real ones, mind you, although I’d have been thrilled to collect those, too, had my parents allowed it. Cat figurines were my jam. I had dozens and dozens of them. So my dad, being the handy guy that he was, built me a shadowbox. It was all the rage in home decor at that time for people to use old letterpress printer’s drawers, those wooden racks that held the pieces of metal type printers would carefully arrange in a tray for the press to ink and print newspapers and flyers and bulletins. They were expensive, if I remember correctly, and somewhat hard to find due to being all the rage. Plus the slots were tiny and some of my cats weren’t. 

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September 25, 2023

The Call of the Commode

There comes a time in every runner’s life (well, walker, in my case), where you are convinced you will crap your pants or be forced to leave a deposit on a neighbor’s lawn, because your bowels simply do not have the fortitude to make it back home in time to use your own toilet.

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July 12, 2023

A moment of music

Our Middle School choir teacher, affectionately called “JRob” by students, faculty, and staff, stopped by the MarComm offices today, answering questions we had about a new, additional role he is taking on this school year. Because I love JRob—have for years ever since he was Zoe’s advisor and I realized during a conference that he had taken the time and the care to truly know my child—I ensnared him into some chit chat before letting him leave. He’s one of those people who is fun to talk to, regardless of the context. In the course of conversation, we spoke about the ongoing renovations of the space behind the stage in Eliot Chapel, a large auditorium next to our offices. It’s being turned into a new classroom. Someone told me this morning that the main renovations were finished, so he and I, along with another colleague in my office, decided to pop back there and see how it looks.

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June 25, 2023

Summer, summer, summertime

I haven’t been writing a lot lately, or rather, I haven’t been writing at all, really, but it’s ok. May is hell at work, absolute hell, for both me and my team and most everybody else who works at a school where children from ages four through 18 are cherished and celebrated. It’s all good stuff, but there’s an absolute fuckton of it and at the end, most of us are damn near comatose with exhaustion. By the time I left on vacation, I could hardly think straight and my motivation was subterranean. At the last moment, I remembered that I hadn’t fulfilled my goal of writing in a different library every month and I was nearly out of time. On the last day of May, I spent my lunch hour in the Upper School library, writing frantically for myself, which I hadn’t done all month. I had written so very much in May but it was all for work, which is fine, ‘tis the season and all that, but I was happy to squeak in that checkmark and not completely hose that particular 2023 goal in the fifth month.

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March 14, 2023

Dispatch From the Caribbean

I kind of wondered how I was going to meet my goal of writing in a new library every month this year, in March. It’s not great to feel as though I’m already teetering on the brink of goal collapse a mere three months in, but March is a bit crazy. I had a work trip to Kansas City that took a weekend, and a cruise in the Caribbean that is taking two. I don’t like waiting until the end of the month to try to reach a goal because then the odds are stacked against me to actually make it happen. I could get a flat tire on the way to the library. I could run into a friend in the grocery store and spend an hour catching up in the produce section, cutting into what would otherwise be writing time. No, I like to bang out that monthly goal early and then sit back in comfort knowing that I could at least check one thing off that 23 in 23 list.

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February 12, 2023

The Power of Music

Zoe and I had a great conversation about music in the car the other day. We were listening to a playlist I had put together for all-school assemblies, which is harder than it sounds because you have to find music that appeals to all ages of kids from four to eighteen. It’s a great playlist, though, and it’s Zoe’s default go-to when I make her choose (if she doesn’t feel like playing Taylor Swift, Tom Petty, or Joy Oladokun). 

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