Mondays at Maywood
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Lucrative lessons
No one goes into teaching for its lucrative potential but it cannot be denied that every day is rich with potential. Potential for what? Disaster, joy, teachers going postal, one never knows. This week’s adventure in learning began with a vocabulary list. I teach a high school English class for international students. On Monday, I went Continue reading
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Pets or Pests?
Why is it that a mouse in Shelley’s bedroom results in a cell-phone video of a screaming woman leaping onto the bed while begging her daddy to save her, but a hamster gone missing brings that very same woman to her hands and knees in her son’s room in a desperate search that, please God, will not end with dead Continue reading
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Monster caterpillar attacks Maywood
Last week we had enormous mutant mushrooms growing in the yard. Last night I came home to the biggest caterpillar I have ever seen in my life. I’m used to seeing bugs and critters, but this thing is creeping me out. Harper and John discovered it on a volunteer tomato plant in the yard, where it was voraciously Continue reading
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Looking for Normal
Maybe this week will be normal. No earthquakes. No hurricanes. No power outages. Just people waking up normally and going normally to where they normally should go. No dramatic surges in cell phone usage. No frantic texting. No schedule rearranging. I’m not getting my hopes up for calm. Just normal. Somewhere in the recesses of Continue reading
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Do we have electricity?
Monday, when my post for Mondays at Maywood is due, I will either have electricity or not. I will either be dealing with lack of power, fallen trees, and water where it shouldn’t be, or I will be calmly observing that the prior week brought both an earthquake and a hurricane. So on Saturday I Continue reading
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Gouttières and Dutch boys’ suits
This is transition week. Next Monday teachers report back to work. This is the week I’m torn by what to do. Do I sit and relax? Do I frantically finish summer projects? Do I “set my face toward Jerusalem” and dig into school work? All of the above? None of the above? (None of the Continue reading
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Life’s a jungle–eat raspberries
Turn your back on things for a bit, watch a few thunderstorms roll through, and the yard becomes a jungle. Weeds sprout tall and vines creep in, around, and over everything. Multiply that by a few years and even things you planted start to take over. In the front of my house, the dark north side where Continue reading
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Smelling the roses…
“Life comes at you fast.” We all love those insurance commercials because we could all have our turn starring in one. Sometimes it even involves a big insurance claim, like for my daughter who recently went through labor with their first child while her husband dealt with a massive basement disaster. Other times, we get caught up Continue reading
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Fluffball 2 (or is it 3?)
Lately there is always some drama going on around here. It has gotten so intense that I was really looking forward to the drive to Tennessee this weekend for a nephew’s wedding. Initially I was dreading using Memorial Day weekend for an all day drive, but sometimes you just need to get away and you don’t even care Continue reading
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Sage Blossoms
Sage blossom–it sounds like a paint color that my daughter Kristin would pick, except that she picks variations on sage green. Sage blossoms are purple. I didn’t even know that sage got flowers until two years ago. (Just shows how “expert” a gardener I am.) At that point my plants had decided they were mature enough Continue reading
Slightly Off the Grid 