Accomplishing Things and Reading Motivational Quotes

You guys, the Mayday tree is budding, the tulips are up, all sorts of hardy plants – yarrow, daylilies, ornamental sage – are making their appearance in my backyard, and today it RAINED. Do you know how rare it is to get rain in Calgary in April? Usually it’s snow. I feel like I’m in […]

Penne for Pi Day

Happy Pi Day everyone! This year the grade sevens were really learning a lot about pi, and calculating circle area, and discussing how pi is actually calculated and how for every circle – every one! – pi is equal to the circumference divided by the diameter, every time, and isn’t that amazing? It is amazing. […]

The End of the Book Fair Lady

That sounds a little ominous, doesn’t it? It’s not the end of my time on this planet – I hope! – but it is the end of my Reign as Book Fair Lady. Eighteen book fairs, people. I have done eighteen book fairs, although to be honest, the New Book Fair Lady (HI HAYDEE) has […]

Women’s Health Week in the Boyhouse

You guys, it is Wednesday already, and in one week, February will be over. Over! February feels like it just started, I have four months left before both of my children are junior high students, one month before I have a teenager, and six days until my very last book fair, all of which are […]

Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl

This morning I heard Copacabana on the way home from yoga, and it set the tone for my whole day. I have been doing the merengue and the cha-cha all day, humming about yellow feathers in my hair and a dress cut down to there. At least I know all the words to Copacabana, which […]

Howard/ Nicole The Duck

One benefit of keeping an old school blog for the past eight years is that I can easily see patterns in my own life. For example, every single fall I feel like I’m careening off the rails a little bit, in terms of busyness, and yes, we are all busy and tired and whatnot, no […]

Life is a destination. No. Wait.

I feel like I’m in some weird time warp and also, like I’m Laura Ingalls at the beginning of the Long Winter, with a sense of foreboding about the months to come. There’s snow on the ground and it’s cold, cold, cold. I dug out my thick woolly legwarmers and enormous warm mittens today, to […]