4 weeks in a row...

16 September 2026: Second place again at trivia. Even without the winning, I've enjoyed it all so much. (And low-key bummed that I'll have to miss the next two weeks for work obligations...)

Common Reading Keynote

15 September 2026: What an absolute delight to see Nathan Richardson perform as Frederick Douglass this evening! It was unlike any Common Reading event we've ever done and students seemed to love it. 

Estrenar

14 September 2026: Spent a lot of time today conferencing with my ENGL 101 students as they work on their Literacy Narratives. Hard, interesting, and fulfilling work—for me and them (I hope).

My last meeting was with a student whose essay is about how writing got her through a very difficult time: a move to a new town when she was in high school. She writes about having to figure out how she was in this new space. How to move through new spaces. How to figure out a new version of herself.

She is also bilingual and, in her draft, mentioned that, as she wrote during that time—especially as she wrote music, some words felt right in Spanish, some in English, etc. She also mentioned words that have no direct translation to English, but didn’t give any examples in the essay.

“What’s one of them?” I asked her.

She paused. “It’s hard to think of one on the spot…”

Then she said, “Well, there’s estrenar, which mean to use or wear something for the first time…”

I got so excited and really nerded out. “You mean like trying something new? Seeing how it feels? Like…what your essay is kind of about?”

Bless her heart: she got excited, too.

Best job in the world.

Hope

13 September 2026: What a cool movie Hope is! Terrific non-stop action, genuinely funny, and the good kind of weird. Fun time!

Saturday to-do list...

12 September 2026: I swear, at least two times today I thought, "Gotta call Mom" and once thought, "Gotta call Mom and Dad." 

The other day, I was telling Erin that I never really adjusted to writing just "Call Mom" on my Saturday list. And that I only had to write that from December to early June. 

Every time I think it--before I am even done processing the thought--I realize the reality. And it's okay. Just really strange, surreal, and sad. 

25 years

11 September 2026: It seems foolish to even try to say something significant 25 years later. Most of my students weren't even born then. They've grown up hearing their teachers talk about "what it was like" every year. Today I just said to them, "It was awful. It sucked. It was really sad." That's all I've got.

Otherwise, grateful today for how much I've grown, changed, and learned since then, even as I know acutely how far I still have to go. 

Grateful for a full day of teaching, progress on some projects, two fresh vaccines (COVID and flu) in my arm, a fun stop at a faculty happy hour, and a night at home with the girls.

Living up to its name...

10 September 2026: Stopped when I got home from work today to admire the butterfly bush doing its thing. Perfect little moment. 

3 weeks in a row...

9 September 2026: Three weeks in a row of playing trivia at the casino. Three weeks in a row of us coming in second and winning $50. Three weeks in a row of feeling pretty good about having something fun to do in the middle of the week. 

Tomatoes and sweets...

8 September 2026: Walked out of trivia this evening with a couple of home-grown tomatoes and some sweets from London and Paris, gifts from two of my favorite teams. (They are all my favorites...) 

At least once a month, I leave with little gifts the teams give me. It's just a lovely reminder of how kind they all are.

Grateful, grateful, grateful. 

Labor Day Breakfast

7 September 2026: Really wonderful to start the day with breakfast at Hannah, Cory, and Theo's. Good food, cool cats, two of my best friends, and their super-fun baby? What more could I ask for?

Rednecks

6 September 2026: "Sid had dug the black veins of West Virginia cola that made hte companies rich that hired these men. Money that could buy mansions on teh shores of cold, clear lakes and twelve-cylinder Italian automobiles and murder in muddy streets behind the gleaming badges of private detective agencies. Coal money, God-strong in Mingo County. Sid smiled because he was risen from the mud of this place, born to meet such men in the street" (9).

Started reading Rednecks, my book club's current selection, today. Digging it so far. And just in time for Labor Day.

Work Cited

Brown, Taylor. Rednecks. St. Martin's, 2024.

Catching up on the social front...

5 September 2026: I've got a list (admittedly not very long, but still) of friends I need to catch up with because I didn't get a chance to see them this summer. Get-togethers delayed, canceled, never scheduled to begin with because I felt too uncertain about where I'd be on any one day.

Got a chance to cross a couple of names off the list tonight, meeting my friends Steve and Kit for dinner in Frederick. We talked for hours, like we always do. Felt wonderful.

Literacy Narrative proposals...

4 September 2026: I spent a big portion of this afternoon reading through my ENGL 101 students' proposals for their literacy narratives. So many good ideas percolating and real depth hiding in some of them. Already, too, evidence of rich and complicated lives.

Lots of work to do--both for them as writers and me as their teacher. But we can do it. 

Sometimes it hits you...

3 September 2026: I really am managing everything well and have been since December. I'm kind of proud of myself about it.

But sometimes it just crashes into me. 

Both gone in less than nine months. So much...just gone. 

I think the thing to do is just feel it. 

And I'll be okay.

Out again on a "school night"

2 September 2026: Second week in a row that I've played Wednesday night trivia at the casino with some friends. Second week in a row that we came in second and won $50. (My friends have been playing every week for longer, but this part of the experience is still new and exciting to me.)

Low-key proud of myself for going out on a school-night and making myself have fun.