For Jake, Martin Sheen & Myself

gotta

I have a student in my class, let’s call him Jake. He’s (secretly) one of my favourite students because he tends to see the glass half full and is grumpy in the most endearing way. He struggles socially and spends a lot of recesses with me as he says “I don’t have friends because my brain has a hard time making some”.  He has big brown eyes and his shoe laces are always undone. Jake has a lot of anxiety issues and when I have a substitute at school, he’s so worried about me he works in counsellors office to help …READ MORE

B.O.T.F.

I went through a phase in my early teens when I was obsessed with jury selection (I mean, who DIDN’T have that phase?) and read every book possible on the topic. This was after the OJ Simpson case and I was convinced that the right jury would have REALIZED WHAT EVERYONE ELSE ALREADY KNEW. I became an expert on how to spot liars, identify psychopaths and establish who wants to wants to chop off your head and use it as a soup bowl so I was convinced I would be up for online dating.

I mean, isn’t that what it …READ MORE

To Read If You Have Kids. Or Ever Plan To Have Kids.

I’m a teacher.

I spend one thousand, three hundred and twenty three hours a year with kids.

I have taught every grade from two to eight. I don’t have a doctorate and I’ve never written a book but I do feel like when it comes to working with kids, I have some insight. I’m sure there’s a secret teacher handbook sitting on some shelf somewhere that says “DO NOT TELL PEOPLE OUR SECRETS”, but I think there are certain things that parents should know. And would make the world run ten thousand times better.

Secret #1: Of course we have …READ MORE

The one where I tell you to kindly shut up

When you think you are casually bringing up the idea of “summer vacation” to a teacher, the reality is you are inadvertently being a douche. Because teachers and summer vacation don’t exist in the way you think they do. Non-teachers assume that teachers work from 9-3pm, get paid fairly and spend large parts of their day doing crafts. We wear witch earrings on Halloween, celebrate Christmas with carols and go on field trips to fun locales. We are rewarded for our pursuits with two months of pure rest and relaxation, where we will jet set the world with our easily …READ MORE

Happy *Galentine’s Day!

I am forever amazed at how fucking awesome the people I know are. I mean it. I’m not sure how I was able to cultivate friendships with such a talented, brilliant and gifted group of women but I am glad I did. My life is marked by the fingerprints these women leave, through their writing and word, kind acts and calls for action and I am better for it.

They are talented moms and friends, wives and daughters, runners and photographers, big idea people and get it done people. They are the women who write essays that can leave me …READ MORE

Here! Look at all the things I am afraid of!

(inspired by one of my *favourites)

I’m thinking of blaming Nike (because after my last globalization class, I like to blame them for everything that’s wrong with the world) or all the pastel colored chick lit books that line my shelves. Or maybe I should just blame Sarah Palin because really, I enjoy blaming her for everything.

More seriously (because really, anything is more serious than Sarah Palin), I think it might be a generational thing. The idea that being afraid of anything, admitting regrets or fears is a weakness. We worked so hard to become leaders and college grads …READ MORE

“Sometimes I think about whales and just about lose my mind.”

One of the absolute best parts of teaching young kids is that you are there for all those quotes and stories that come out unfiltered. Young kids don’t always put the words in the right order, they don’t care what others think and they are never politically correct. Which makes conversations with them one of the highlights of my job.  So whenever we had downtime, whether it was eating at lunchtime or riding on a fluorescent orange school bus coming back from a field trip, I always liked to ask my third grade class questions. About love and books and …READ MORE

On Why Mom Bloggers Make Me Bitter

Let’s just start out by saying this. I’m not 100% percent bitter, only about 83%. And not at all moms. Just 31% of them. But a title called “Why I’m 83% Bitter at 31% of Moms” gave my math phobic self severe heart palpitations.

One of my favourite bloggers once said “everyone has something”, a statement referring to the idea that each person is going through their own battle- a notion that has really hit home with me in the last few months. Bloggers with children are no exception. I read a lot of blogs of women in their 30′s and …READ MORE

This is what happens when you say YES.

Yes to big ideas. Not to marriage proposals. So just… get that thought of the way. (If you listen quietly, you can hear my mom weeping).

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about saying Yes. I wrote about branching out and creating a list of 10 liberating and slightly irresponsible choices and using the month of June  to jump into the deep scary end of the ocean of living. Here is the list and what I’ve done so far…

1. Instead of skipping out on the bill (which was suggested in the original list- which? Is too …READ MORE

Mascara and lipgloss and A CONTEST, oh my!

By the time I was a teenager, I was fully immersed in a world of Clinque lipgloss and Tribe perfume. Thankfully, my mom realized I was hooked and took me to rehab an Estee Lauder expert who explained that lipliner should not be black and blush? Should not be seen as a fuchsia tiger stripe running across my face.

Thanks, mom.

(via)

The downside to this addiction is that I’m pretty much solely responsible for Sephora existing. I’ve at least paid for the owner’s yacht a few times over with my addiction to “mascara research”. So I’ve …READ MORE