Category: For What It’s Worth
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🧠 The Twilight Zone: A Peek Inside a Mom’s Brain After Dinner, Before Bed
Dinner is done. Sort of. Plates are still scattered, someone has mysteriously disappeared mid-bite, and there’s a noodle stuck to the wall—but technically, the meal has concluded. And now begins the strangest stretch of the day: after dinner, before bedtime. This is the hour where moms do their best Olympic-level multitasking… fueled only by crusty…
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🎒Backpacks, Lesson Plans, and a Quiet Car Seat
A Teacher Mom’s Back-to-School Story Back-to-school season has always been a whirlwind. But this year? It feels like a new chapter—and a big one. I’m heading back to my classroom, but this time, I’m bringing two of my kids with me. My daughter is going into 2nd grade—confident, chatty, and fully embracing the role of…
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The Good Ole’ Days, Today
What Is, What Will Be, What We’ll Miss There’s a certain kind of day we’re living in right now. The kind filled with sticky fingers and missing shoes, morning cartoon negotiations and bedtime bribery. The kind where your coffee is cold and your patience runs hot, and you think to yourself, Is it bedtime yet?…
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Middle School…Then vs. Now
A Walk Down the Hallway of Time Middle School Then vs. Now: A Walk Down the Hallway of Time If you survived middle school in the late 90s, you probably remember a lot of awkwardness, chunky highlights, and the pain of getting kicked off AIM because your mom needed the phone. And if you’re teaching…
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VHS, AOL, TGIF…A Love Letter to the 90s
If you were born in 1986 like me, then you were raised in what might be the weirdest, most wonderful, delightfully awkward time in history: the 90s.Before WiFi, before smartphones, and definitely before “aesthetic” was a thing, we had jelly shoes, cassette tapes, and a whole lot of neon. We were the last generation to…
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Sundays in Mom Mode
Rest, Reset, and the Sunday Scaries There’s something about Sundays that’s both soothing and slightly stressful when you’re a mom. It starts slow—coffee, cartoons, maybe a moment of quiet before the chaos kicks in. And then it rolls right into the checklist: laundry piles, grocery lists, prepping backpacks, refereeing fights over the last waffle… and…
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Teaching Middle Schoolers to Write Essays (a Journey in Caffeine and Patience)
Yes, the letter “I” is capitalized when it stands alone… If you’ve ever tried to teach a middle schooler how to write an essay, you know it’s not just about thesis statements and topic sentences—it’s about survival. It’s guiding students who think “because I said so” is valid evidence and believe their five-paragraph paper should…
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Thirty-Nine Is Coming In Hot …
Looking Back, Leaning Forward So here I am… on the edge of 39. Not quite 40. Not really clinging to 30. Just kind of floating in that limbo where you still say things like “back in the day” and forget you are the day. Turning 39 is weird. It’s like being the last page of…
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What’s Love Got To Do With It?
I Found My Husband at 30—and It Was Right on Time I didn’t meet my husband in high school. Or college. Or at some magical post-grad event where everyone’s drinks matched their personalities and their futures were perfectly mapped out. Nope. I found him at 30. Right at the moment I stopped frantically searching and…
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Reading “The Anxious Generation”
A Wake-Up Call for the Smartphone Era I recently read The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. As a parent, educator, and part-time chaos coordinator of three kids under ten, this book felt less like a light read and more like a neon sign blinking, “PAY ATTENTION.” It’s…
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Coffee ☕️ Crayons 🖍️ and Curriculum 📝 