October 13, 2024
ALDI: A Love Story
People. I know I’m late to the party, but I should get credit for finally arriving, right?
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October 6, 2024
It’s getting hot in here
Warning: this post is sweary. Given the topic, I had no choice. Forgive me. If you don’t like expletives, you are dismissed.
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September 29, 2024
The Art of Letting Go
My deep contemplation of letting go began in earnest in late 2019 when I signed up for an online decluttering class and, over the course of the next year, excavated my home to dismiss a bunch of crap that was simply weighing us down. Releasing physical objects is perhaps the easiest kind of letting go.
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September 23, 2024
Two-Thirds Birds
After several weeks of family members, friends, and colleagues approaching me cautiously with wide eyes and gentle demeanors, grasping me softly by the arm, leaning in, and whispering, “How are you doing? Are you okay?” I think it’s time to come clean.
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February 7, 2024
Resume of a Yorkie
TRUMAN CAPOTE STACK GIBBS ZLATIC
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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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October 22, 2023
Would you eat this?
The answer is no. Trust me.
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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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