Category: Uncategorized

Posted on

Calling All Book Club Recommendations

all I want to do

is turn pages and get lost

in a mystery

to read poetry

biography and memoir

fiction, non-fiction

I’ll take all of it,

add it to my TBR

pile, curl up, and read

Come sit right here by me if you’re a reader. Settle in, pour a cup of coffee, and let’s have a book chat. I want to hear what stories have kept you reading this year, and how your reading has inspired new adventures.

I’ll go first. Right now, I’m reading Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson, which will be the January 2026 pick for our Kindred Spirits book club. It has me on the edge of my seat at every new twist and turn. I especially like that the setting is taking me back to our trip to Woodstock, Vermont in November of 2024, where we had one of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had in my life, complete with Vermont maple syrup that was made from the trees on the property where we were staying. A friend and member of the Kindred Spirits book club recommended Woodstock as a stop on our trip after NCTE last year, and we used her exact trip itinerary from a trip she’d taken with her daughter in planning our own. While my husband and I were in Woodstock, we took some time to go exploring a few back roads while we were there, and I have some of the setting assigned to places we saw, such as the famous bridge. It’s hard to imagine that a crime like the one in this book could happen there, but where there are humans, there will be crime. This book inspired me to wrap up in a blanket I bought from the Vermont Flannel Company while I was there and to pull up the photos from that amazing trip and add them to the new digital photo frame my daughter sent us for Christmas. Oh, to go back there!

The Kindred Spirits dive into exciting fiction, and this group tends to gravitate toward thrillers. Once we’ve finished reading a book, we plan some sort of adventure to go along with what we have read so that we allow our reading to inspire new discoveries. You can see our reading choices and adventures from 2025 here. We’ll be meeting December 19 to put the first six months of our 2026 list together. I’d like to ask for your favorite book recommendations. Please help us out ~ which books have you read recently that you savored, and what made you fall in love with them? Also, have you ever been part of a reading retreat where everyone reads a few books and then drives an hour or two to a mountain lodge for a weekend to talk about those books, read more books, sit by the fire, eat delicious food, visit a spa, and shop in the stores on the town square? We’ve heard of those retreats and are thinking of trying one sometime this year, so we’re all ears for your most exciting book experiences as we plan a few slices of life.

A street scene of Woodstock, Vermont
My husband sits by the fire of the Woodstock Inn as we wait to eat dinner
My second favorite shop in Woodstock, where I bought our favorite blanket (the bookstore was my favorite)
Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers
Posted on

December Cozyla

My daughter sent a text to alert me about a package to arrive shortly as she tracked its movements. She asked me to call when we opened it so that she could give us a few pointers about it (I’ve noticed that the older I get, the more my children have started offering pointers on how to work things).

As we FaceTimed, she watched our excitement when we realized she’d sent us a digital photo frame.

How wonderful! I exclaimed, already thinking of all the photos I would upload and wondering if I would be able to figure it out. It would be nice to see snapshots from our recent week in the Great Smoky Mountains. When I’ve wanted to see those photos, I’ve had to scroll to them on the camera and search – – but a digital frame would keep them rolling and keep us thinking of the family members who mean so much to us!

That’s not just any digital frame, Mom, she explained. That’s a Cozyla interactive frame. If you invite all your kids to upload photos, we can send you pictures anytime and you can see them pop up in real time. You’ll hear a Boo…Boop and it’ll be a notification alerting you that we’re sending you new pictures.

I set it up while she was on FaceTime with me and already have nearly 200 photos in the album. I’m going strong, and I didn’t need as many pointers as she (or I) thought I might. I can’t wait to get my first notification that a new photo has popped up. We’ll be on the lookout for new smiling faces of our grandchildren – – which is like a new gift every day, especially during the holidays with all their excitement. It’s even more so since with four children in four different states, we don’t get to be together in person nearly as often as we’d like.

digital photos

family togetherness

keeping moments fresh

Posted on

A Finished Hardscape

We’ve needed for about 2 years to redesign our front hardscape bed when the river rocks we’d put down many years ago began looking dated and worn. Instead of taking them up, we left them as the base, killed the weeds, and laid new landscape fabric over the top of the lackluster layer. We began the process a month or so ago, knowing that pacing would be important for us at our ages. Still, we wanted to do it ourselves because we’ve always enjoyed creating a vision and making it happen – – together!

We started with bright white rock (which will turn a light gray in about 6 months), curving one edge of the rock to prepare for the next layer. We also wanted to use black rock and possibly some pine straw as a way to blend some landscape into the hardscape – pine straw not really being the first choice, but a budgetary consideration and trade-off for the black rock I really wanted to be able to include in the overall design. It’s a lot like building a house – – you have to make some sacrifices to realize some gains. We added a barn scene Christmas flag and moved the American flag to the Purple Martin pole while we clean out their house, and added a faux boulder to the mix. A few solar pathway lights, a couple of my late mother’s birdbaths, and a pre-lit Christmas wreath with a sparkly red bow completed the design we’d needed to update for a handful of years. We pulled out the elephant ears and the jasmine that was everywhere, even climbing onto the roof.

Our goal was to create a low-maintenance garden look that doesn’t require a lot of weeding or fluffing. Our budget was to not break the bank. But with rocks being $12 a bag and covering the space of the bag itself times 2, we were only within budget for the white rock section. Added plants will only happen minimally henceforth, and only in pots so that we can keep the pruning and weeding under control and raise the pots if we can’t bend.

The finished hardscape

We’re satisfied with the finished look, and more than happy that the front bed work will carry us to the next decade….and now, once we’ve let our backs recover for the winter, there’ll be the beds in the back of the house that will need some attention come springtime. For the first time in my life, I see why senior citizens choose condominium living complete with groundskeeping fees. It’s tempting. Very, very tempting.

—–for now our sore backs

keep reminding us that we’re

not twenty years old…….

Posted on

December Gift Basket

One type of poem I’ve been writing this year is a gift basket poem – – what would I give a recipient in any given month of the year? For December, the choice is clear: it’ll be filled with seasonal snowy white wonderland things. 

If I were giving
you a gift basket
I’d go with winter white!


you’d receive
a sherpa lounge throw, electric and soft ~
three settings to warm the winter chill


a Paperwhite Kindle, Signature edition
with stories your heart to fill


and a candle, glowing bright
in the darkest night, a flame for the windowsill

Posted on

December – Spiritual Journey Thursday (SJT)

Our host for Spiritual Journey Thursday for December is Jone MacCulloch, who shares a quote by Thomas Merton to inspire reflection and writing: The world of men has forgotten the joys of silence, the peace of solitude, which is necessary, to some extent, for the fullness of human living. Jone invites us to share what we are doing in these days of December to promote periods of silence and reflection. You can read her full post here at this link.

Morning Silence

when the alarm goes off

at 5 a.m., I rise and follow

protocol ~ slippers, robe,

bathroom, toothbrush,

thyroid meds, then back

through the bedroom with

three taps on my hip

whereupon twelve paws

hit the floor and follow me

out to the living room

and into the front yard

to greet darkness,

stillness, silence,

Venus shining a

shadowy spotlight on the

frigid farmland, our

breath white and wispy

rising as a quiet prayer

before scuffing

back indoors, three

Schnoodles awaiting

treats before their

return to bed

…

but I savor the peace

of the morning

sipping coffee

writing

by the light of

the tree where the

only sounds

are my thoughts

Posted on

December Tricube

Today’s post is a tricube poem. A tricube has three stanzas of three lines, with three syllables on each. The rhyme scheme is abc abc abc. 

holly red
mittens green
sugarplums

Santa's sled
Shelf Elf's been
snowfall comes

quilt-piled bed
silver sheen
Jack Frost numbs
Posted on

December Shadorma

The Shadorma form is six lines, containing a syllable line count in this order: 3/5/3/3/7/5. To welcome December, I celebrate all those who are special in my life today – family, readers (that’s you), writing circles, book club, and friends who fill my life with warmth.

leaning in

pouring tea with friends

embracing

fireside warmth

this is how to live a life~

I got dressed for this!

Posted on

Petey the PD Prairie Dog

After returning from an AI Summit in Denver, Colorado where we’d discovered a vacant lot full of playful, entertaining prairie dogs, our Teaching and Learning Department re-created the mascot for our upcoming professional development club that begins in January. We got the idea for the club from a team of teachers in Gwinnett County, Georgia who’d presented their voluntary PD club at the fall GACIS conference in Athens, Georgia in September. They are the BATS (Better At Teaching Strategies). We decided to be the BEES (Becoming Excellent Educators). We designed a bee logo and even ordered little bees as decor for our meetings. But then we saw those prairie dogs and considered their initials. P.D. We called one by its initials and realized we were calling him a given name – Petey.

Petey the Professional Development Prairie Dog. We liked it better than the bees. So the week before Thanksgiving, we spent some time with our Instructional Technologist designing our new mascot and creating an invitation to gather and garner interest on universal strategy topics. My team asked me to create a limerick for the invitation, so I created one to show that this form of Professional Development we plan to offer will be teacher-driven, not district-driven. We sent out a QR code on the invitation, promising snacks and fun, and we can’t wait to start this new club.

Here is our invitation:

I’m hoping that someone who is reading this may have a voluntary PD club in your school system. If so, I’d love to know your formats and structures of successful PD clubs. Please share and lend any expertise that would be helpful for us.

Posted on

Cutting Ties: On Not Missing A Narcissist

I had lunch with a couple of friends this week who are looking more forward to the holidays this year than ever before. They’ve cut out a toxic personality from their lives, and they say life has never been better. I celebrate them and share, with permission and in poetic form, their sentiments from our conversation. Sometimes holidays require us to consider our own mental health, and this year is that year for them. They’ve cut all ties and have moved on with their lives in healthier ways. I couldn’t be happier for them.

They say they don’t miss a dozen iterations of a

salad not even on the menu or

the barely audible low talk with fake

victim eyes, polished nails tapping a

coffee mug

they don’t miss

making plans they never wanted in the

first place or the never-ending reach for

attention or the Bible whippings from

a pious mouth-hole

or her.

They don’t miss

her.

They don’t miss all the presumptions or her

sickening fundie baby voice or the conclusive

expressions of the Dunning-Kruger con artist

or the mission that something needs to be

fixed and she’s the sole savior to do it.

No one misses her.

No one wants to fix her broken world.

They mostly see her as a mosaic of

toxic personalities, there

in a heap of jagged

edges just waiting to cut her next victim

this narcissistic it’s-all-about-me princess of her

own flying monkey fantasy kingdom

who is always, always the victim.

Posted on

November 29: Birdwatching on Birthday Week

I counted 29 species on this week’s birdwatching adventures. So on November 29th, I list them all here below:

Red-shouldered Hawk

Red-bellied woodpecker

Downy woodpecker

Pileated woodpecker

Northern Flicker

Eastern Phoebe

Blue Jay

American Crow

Carolina Chickadee

Tufted Titmouse

White-Breasted Nuthatch

Brown-Headed Nuthatch

Carolina Wren

Northern Mockingbird

eastern Bluebird

American Robin

Cedar Waxwing

House Sparrow

House Finch

American Goldfinch

Chipping Sparrow

White-throated Sparrow

Song Sparrow

Eastern Towhee

Red-winged Blackbird

Palm Warbler

Pine Warbler

Yellow-rumped Warbler

Northern Cardinal

– – but one bird stands alone

He’s one of a kind

I haven’t seen him this week

but he’s having a birthday

I want to give the loudest

lovingest shout out

to my baby brother, Ken

I’m glad we grew up

together

in the same nest, and though we have

flown in different directions

we are still

birds of a feather. Hayneses.

Happy birthday, little brother!