On an average day, my daughter’s question-to-declarative sentence ratio clocks in at a healthy 5:1. In this section of the blog, I explore what happens when instead of saying “I don’t know,” I say “Let’s find out!”
I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few days on the phone with various parents trying to figure out what a reasonable plan for my daughter’s education during our area’s COVID-19 outbreak might look like. I’ve also spent several hours scanning the web to see what our online options are. Here’s what I think we might do.
In which I talk about some of the things I’ve been doing instead of posting on Caterpickles.
A few years ago, my husband began making biscuits on Saturday mornings. Although not all of his efforts have been equally delicious, we love starch in nearly all of its forms, so we happily ate the not-so-great batches to make room on the table for the even better batches to come. With one exception. The one and only batch of biscuits so horrible no amount of bacon could save them tasted like fluffy metal. How did that happen?
Recently I’ve realized that the only thing worse for my mental health than Political Twitter is Coronavirus Twitter. To cheer myself up, I’ve started reading post-apocalyptic dystopian novels. I haven’t read that many yet, but I have read enough to notice that the just-in-time food supply rarely survives the first few chapters. That made me wonder… what if my best strategy for surviving an apocalypse is not merely to stockpile food, but to learn how to grow it?
The end of January is traditionally the time when I give up on whatever it is I’ve resolved to do differently this year. This year, I’m trying something different — not making the resolution until the end of January in the first place. Let’s see if that works. 🙂
I joined Facebook a very long time ago as a way to reconnect with old friends, keep my extended family up to date on funny stuff The Youngest Howell said, and of course, post cat pictures. It was fun and seemed harmless at the time. But my daughter is older now, and it’s time to re-examine my social media use.
I was shocked to learn that Darwin didn’t believe dogs were descended from wolves. I had just assumed that the idea came from him. Learning it didn’t has me questioning all kinds of things — like do scientists think dogs are related to wolves at all?
In 2012, my then five-year-old daughter and I spent quite a bit of our time looking at, talking about, and creating art. So it was a bit of a surprise to hear her ask one day, “Mommyo, what do I have to do to get a job in government?”
Four years ago, my daughter asked me if we could do an actually fun craft one day, like hatch our own giganotosaur. Today I finally got around to scouring the web until I found instructions for making your own dinosaur egg from common crafting supplies and household tools.
While swinging on the swing set one blissful afternoon, The Twelve-Year-Old noticed a furry beast with a rather fine set of long yellow teeth staring at her from his burrow. Naturally she wanted to know what was watching her. “Mommyo is that weird beastie a mole, vole, or gopher?”
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