I went down to Tiltonsville, to see the ancient burial mound. I’d been looking for more things to see around the Ohio river valley, now that Adrienne is so happy in school and I’m not a homeschooling mother anymore. I’ve decided to homeschool myself, to take myself on field trips and teach myself things. I was excited when I found out there was a burial mound of the prehistoric Adena people very close by Steubenville, about twenty minutes away.... Read more
April had been a bit of a sprint, but May has started out better. I did finish those taxes that were worrying me so much, and got a tiny bit bigger rebate than I thought, and it didn’t quite cover rent our rent that’s due the fifteenth but we managed. I finished my student loan paperwork, the day before that April 30th deadline, even though I promised myself I wouldn’t wait til the last minute, because I realized I’d forgotten... Read more
I woke up to the sound of the lawnmower. The sound of a lawnmower used to make me panic. The stalking neighbor who terrorized us got up to mow the lawn once or twice a week at eight o’clock in the morning. She would stim back and forth across the same spot over and over again for hours, and then she’d rake up every last blade of grass while cursing under her breath about what pigs her neighbors were. She... Read more
I got to see the trilliums one more time. I went on a hike on Saturday Evening, to admire the ephemerals again. I’ve been admiring them everywhere I’ve gone for weeks. Ephemeral wildflowers are the type that don’t last all year long. They have tiny lives, for a few weeks in the spring and sometimes a few weeks in autumn, because that’s when the sun hits the forest floor. I keep getting out of my car to take pictures,... Read more
I still haven’t gotten over the strange case of Father Justin. The rise and fall of Father Justin sounded like something out of a science fiction novel, albeit a bad one. It felt to me as if a Christian publishing company had decided to make an uninspired knockoff of a William Gibson novel, the way Hilda Stahl wrote The Best Friends as a knockoff of the secular Baby-Sitters’ Club. But the story of Father Justin is such a bad... Read more
I watched the first two days of this first Trump trial, numbly. By “watched,” of course, I mean I refreshed the page on X/Twitter every so often as the Inner City Press quickly tweeted out a transcript of the trial. I consider myself a fast typist, but I could never type as that man types. He’s as good as having an audio recording of the proceedings. I kept scrolling down to read the latest, filling in the voices... Read more
I woke up in a mood. The anxiety is still nagging. It comes and goes. The tax rebate hadn’t come in yet, even though we’d already mailed the rent, and the amount of the rebate won’t cover both the rent and the water bill that was due Tuesday the way we’d planned. That was going to be a mess. I’ve still got to fill out my student debt paperwork for some of the Biden changes, and that always fills me... Read more
Let’s talk about school. I’ve talked a lot about my own experiences in school. Before I was homeschooled, I went to Catholic parochial schools and hated every minute of it. I was bullied into full-blown PTSD by the children and even one of the teachers. The academics weren’t very good either. After that I was homeschooled from the sixth grade until college, and homeschooling saved my life. It was the best choice my parents could have made. We belonged to... Read more
It happened when I was weeding the strawberries. It was the brightest of bright late April days, after a soggy week. The grass was high– Jimmy the Mechanic knows I like to mow it after the dandelions have bloomed, so the pollinators can eat. The lilacs were opening. I could hear the songbirds nearby, and the neighborhood hawks calling in the distance. I’d weeded the onions and found a few volunteer sunflower seedlings, from where the birds tore the... Read more
The first criminal trial of a former United States president, begins in the morning. I’m writing this in the wee hours of Monday morning. By the time you read it, the trial will probably have begun. And of course, by the trial I mean jury selection. The boring part. We won’t get to the exciting part for weeks. Donald Trump, the champion of the pro-life movement and American Christianity, is accused of falsifying business records to hide a hush... Read more
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