Image shows Timmy Failure and his Polar bear in the car which Timmy has just driven through the wall of the wrong neighbor's house.

Book Review: Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made by Stephen Pastis

School’s back in session, which means I’m once again sneaking peeks at the books that cross my path courtesy of the kids at the local middle school library.

Some personal news…

School starts on Wednesday, and guess who gets to start working in the library in-person again (at least for now)?

Where does the phrase “raining cats and dogs” come from anyway?: Part 2

A Jonathan Swift poem? Norse mythology? A mistranslation from the Greek? Shoddy thatched roof craftsmanship? Where does the phrase “raining cats and dogs” come from anyway? (Part 2 of our 2-post investigation)

a semi-circle of US flags flying against a light blue sky.

Happy Fourth of July!

Where does the phrase “raining cats and dogs” come from anyway?

Thatched roofs? Unsavory Elizabethan street sanitation practices? A 1652 Richard Brome play? Where does the phrase “raining cats and dogs” come from anyway?

worker using a broom to push fish to the side of the road

Update to a Past Caterpickles: “Why does it rain fish in Honduras?”

While I was busy not blogging this month, it came to my attention that this blog is ten years old. Goodness. I thought it would be fun to mark its decade-aversary by revisiting a question post from the early days of the blog to see how well my answer has held up. Spoiler alert: Not well.

One shot down, one to go

One side benefit of The 14-Year-Old being older than I think she can possibly be, is the fact that she is eligible to get the COVID-19 vaccine. We took her last week to one of our county’s mass vaccination sites. One shot down, one to go.

Wordless Wednesday: Crocheted Unicorn Mugshot

It’s too warm this week to knit blankets, so I’ve switched to amigurumi (the craft of crocheting little stuffed toys). It’s finicky work and I’m always deeply uncertain about the results, which is why as soon as there is a hint of coolness in the air, I plan to go right back to making blankets. Anyway, this week I made this unicorn.

Mural displays the words It's a Beautiful Day painted in white in a rounded all-caps font against a black background. The artist has painted a multi-layered shadow for each of the letters in the words out of the colors of the rainbow. The effect is to make the words look like they've been launched into space, trailing rainbow flames. (Sorry this is a terrible description.)

Languishing our way through 2021, coping skills for kids, and other news of the week

All week I kept stumbling across useful articles and podcasts about this almost-there-but-not-quite-yet moment in the pandemic. Here are three of my favorites on muddling through this moment in the pandemic; helping middle schoolers establish and evolve critical coping skills to manage their stress, anger, and anxiety; and pandemic changes parents actually want to keep.