Hadley wants me to crack and peel her hard-boiled egg, and I am looking at three too-ripe bananas and thinking about banana bread. “I will if you pull out Ina Garten’s recipe for Banana Crunch Muffins,” I tell her. Banana bread is delicious. I throw in cinnamon and chocolate chips, and I’ve learned from Food 52 that whole fat, plain… View Post

Around here, a soccer team finished their season strong. This is a picture that was taken a few minutes after they learned they were the division champions. I love that their coaches didn’t tell them that’s what they were playing for until after the game. I love that instead, as the girls take the field, they yell, “Go out with… View Post

  {This is a little something I wrote for Ypsilanti Community School’s “Off the Shelf” newsletter.} The night before I interviewed for the At-Risk Literacy Specialist position at YIES and Perry, I asked Jesse what he thinks I should do if I’m asked about the teaching job I left three months earlier. “Should I even say anything?” I asked him…. View Post

Harper: Finished up the last Harry Potter book – I think this is her third time reading the series. She also read No Cream Puffs, by Karen Day. “I like this book, because it was about baseball, and I love baseball! The characters were also really funny, and it takes place in Michigan!!!” (Harper loves exclamation points. I think she is, at… View Post

Was it a Kleenex commercial that followed a few parents of Olympiads through their dark mornings, helping to pack bags with sports equipment and snacks, through the afternoons-turned-evening-turned-nights sitting on cold benches in the rain, in the snow, in the wasp-filled sunshine watching their very talented, very strong, very capable athletes do their thing? And it was all worth it… View Post