It's Dilovely

Seven years ago, in my second year of teaching, I taught at a Catholic elementary school. I’m not Catholic, but French teachers are often in short supply, and I was in no position to be picky about jobs. Sometimes I was a bit uncomfortable being a Quaker inside the Catholic bubble with all the unfamiliar [...]

Sean asked me yesterday if I blog to try to “make sense of the world.” Yes. Absolutely. That has never been more true than now. I also blog because, as I know from keeping a diary for so long, it helps a lot in painful moments. It’s a way for me to remove a piece [...]

Images dropping before my mind’s eye like slides: lockdown drills suddenly in sharp focus, children huddling with their backs against the wall, invisible to an intruder, teachers shushing them and hoping they’d manage in a real emergency. Now there are real pictures. Children who will now always feel sick at the sound of a loud [...]

I am not a poet. Still, sometimes life seems a bit more manageable with a prescribed number of syllables, doesn’t it? *** Small furious boy growls and pounds the couch cushions his mind filled with NO. *** When a little guy endeavours to create art his tongue must stick out. *** Blue eyes gazing up [...]

Monday morning – July 9th, 2012 Dear Sebastian, It’s 9:04 a.m. as I begin this post. It was important to me to write this morning, because I know that at this same hour, one year ago, you were still in my arms. It is exactly the same kind of morning it was on the day [...]

Hey, it’s Day 17 – IN A ROW! Are you sick of me yet?? Anyway. When I was younger, I figured I could write poetry. Sometimes I wrote things that rhymed, but most of it was free verse. I considered it poetry if I used words that sounded poetic to me, on what I considered [...]

I took a gamble and brought my kindergarten class to the Remembrance Day assembly today, just after 11 a.m. We had talked about it beforehand, especially the minute of silence, and I think they were excited to take the challenge. I told them I’d spoken to the principal about it, and we both believed they [...]

If you liked Rainy Day Cindy, Part 1, I hope you’re ready! She’s about to take life to a whole new level. In case you’re wondering, I was never bedridden due to a cold as a child. Also, I did not spell as well as this. There are many more spelling mistakes in the rough [...]

  And here she is, folks. My first protagonist, created and lovingly illustrated when I was six – twenty-seven years ago. (The rough draft is dated Nov. ’84.)  Big thanks to my dad, for saving these pages for all this time, and then scanning them for me with such care. I give you… Rainy Day [...]

I am glad to be blogging in such a user-friendly age. (This is partly because I know very little about actual, real web design. I wouldn’t even blog if it weren’t for WordPress… and my dad.) WordPress makes a handy-dandy plugin (customizable feature) called Akismet, which is the reason I have never had my server crash due [...]