The New Year Questionnaire – a look back at 2022

Here’s the New Year Questionnaire! As per tradition, not even close to “on time.” (Though not as late as some New Years.) Also – shorter than it used to be, and adjusted this year to be a bit more contemplative, inspired by my amazing cousin-sister Quinn at The Retreat Space. AND… guess what, I’ve been Read More

How can I be writing about this again?

It has been almost a decade since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Is that enough time between senseless mass killings of American children? How can we be here again? Being a human, and especially an elementary school teacher, I grieve every time this happens, anywhere. I’m sure these Grade 4 students in Texas are Read More

Dilovely’s New Year Questionnaire for 2021

Here we are! The fresh (2-week-old) new year of 2022! Off to a roaring start with Omicron. A friend of mine on Facebook was reflecting this New Year’s that at the end of 2020, we were so happy to see the year finish, full of hope for an end to the pandemic. Then, 2021 crushed Read More

Celebrating my 9-year-old on International Day of the Girl

Dear AB, Today is International Day of the Girl Child, and it seems a great opportunity to talk about you, my Rainbow baby, seeing as your birthday was less than two weeks ago. Your birthday will henceforth always fall on the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation (though you have been wearing an orange shirt Read More

To My Firstborn, Age 12

Dear E, You’ve now been twelve for three weeks. It has been a long time since I managed to post about you for your birthday, because funnily enough, it always falls at the busiest time of year. I am determined to write – and finish – this post, so that someday (if you ever read Read More

New Year’s Questionnaire for 2020: The Year The World Stood Still

It’s always fun to post a piece so late that it’s basically irrelevant… Sigh. (And this piece would still be waiting to be finished if it weren’t for the long dentist appointment the kids and I had last week that gave me an hour in which I couldn’t work on report cards.) At least I Read More

Some Leftover Gratitude for 2021

Hi, lovelies, Happy New Year! You might have noticed that I was going strong with my gratitude posts for almost all of November, then suddenly posted nothing at all for more than a month. Yep. In case you wondered, it doesn’t mean that I had no gratitude during that time. Quite the contrary, I was Read More

My American Peeps – Gratitude Day 26

Tonight, I am grateful for my American relatives and friends. Honestly, they are some of the best, funniest, thoughtfulest, interestingest, intelligentest, loveliest people I know. I am so thankful to know them, and for the fact they have so far managed to stay safe and well. I am grateful that they will no longer have Read More

Family of Word Nerds – Gratitude Day 21

I’m grateful to be able to say that my children have inherited my penchant for interesting vocabulary. AB is relishing the lessons they’ve been doing in her class on adding “juicy details” to one’s writing. Yesterday, E correctly (and metaphorically) used the word “begat” in a sentence. More on their lexical prowess later. For now, Read More

A Lovely Anniversary – Gratitude Day 8

Today I’m grateful for happy anniversary memories of this day last year – and this whole weekend last year – when my sister Emily married her love. I’m grateful that I got to be there in Seattle (actually nearby Everett) as a witness – facilitated by my now-brother-in-law (thank you! xoxo). And I’m extra-grateful that Read More