I Won My Own Planet (Sort Of)!!!

Coming into this week, I expected a lot of things.  Receiving an award wasn’t one of them.  I expected to be tired.  I expected to be stressed.  It’s the first week of the annual summer day camp I oversee, and faced with thirteen-hour workdays from now until the beginning of August, I expected to put […]

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Snails or “Thirty-Seven Gallons of Terror”

Swallowing hard, I caught the scream rising in my throat and replaced it with a terrified gasp.  From the vantage point on his green micro-fiber throne, Prince Luca opened one yellow eye and glared accusingly as I stepped backward.  Deciding I was in no real danger—and that my interruption of his sleep could be forgiven—he […]

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How To Become an Accident(al) Farm Hand

Call it the butterfly effect.  Call it whatever you like; sometimes life’s seemingly insignificant twists and turns carry a big impact.  If you’d told me two years ago I’d be spending one day a week on a farm, I’d have said you’re crazy.  But accidents happen, and sometimes they result in pounds of tomatoes and […]

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Fifty Words for Rain

It is rumored that the Eskimo had fifty words for snow—you know, a word for the big fat flakes, and for the little tiny ones that don’t amount to much, for the driving blizzards and the gentle, sound-muffling windless storms.  I have not independently verified this, but I’d like to believe it’s true. I love […]

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To Be Seen Amongst the Unseeing Millions

Ryan hesitated a moment as he felt the cold metal of the knob press against his palm.  Beyond the glass door he watched the sky—a perfect, dull, uniform grey—and wondered if he should go back downstairs for a jacket.  No, he needed to feel this.  He needed to feel something.  Bracing against the wind that […]

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