In Philly you can fulfill “time” spent “doing education” in days, or hours. Since the Days hold no set requirement of Hours, I’ve always held myself to hours, figuring it was the more rigorous standard. It was also, pre-COVID, effortless to fill (900 hours), because they had a lot of “extracurricular” activities. Obviously “extracurricular” is…

For Tuck’s birthday. This WOULD have gotten the Paul Hollywood handshake, I’m sure of it. Also had assorted dim sum from Bing Bing and watched That Mitchell and Webb Look. And, he got a steamed pudding mold, after all these years. This is the tenth time we’ve celebrated a birthday with Tucker. Turning 27 on…

Oh. Could not recommend more highly and I presume MANY actual English and Social Studies teachers agree. Claudia had a visceral need to roll out dough this afternoon — so, with total independence, they made individual pizzas for lunch!

The Hill We Climb My kids have never been the ones making fun of bards as “useless” in D&D and after today maybe they won’t have to waste time listening to anyone else do it.

We just watched Joe Biden and Kamila Harris being sworn in. I remember election night in 2016 and the kids going to bed, not knowing the results yet, but it being pretty obvious Trump was going to win. Béla was particularly frightened of being sent back to Korea. I wrote each of them letters and…

texting each other while being able to hear each other’s covers rustling. I’ve been playing with filters more. The cats, particularly Marble, consider her room the Chosen Land. It’s so full of books and witchcraft and music — and endless hours of Claudia soaked into the walls. The cats love to lie with her as…

yes lawd! as promised, béla whipped these up before a FULL house of online D&D tonight. Spam, seaweed, rice, sesame seeds, egg, kimchi. with a clever fold so very little falls out. Béla made a synthesizer this week as well. And Claudia cuddled with her familiar.

Whatever! (Well — wait until you see what Béla’s planning on making for a D&D snack this weekend. We’ll call that our contribution to the revelry.) This meme is Béla-approved: Of course, as on the spot as the joke remains… if non-BIPOC folks have started to identity the Chinese/Japanese/Korean “look” as East Asian rather than…

You know you’re on the right track when you’re homeschooling the Russell Brand way. Ahem. So far, a well-used Christmas gift, as we knew it would be. Béla was very quick in getting us to peruse the book with him and commit to our birthday desserts. Last year was the first year that we realized…

She said “I want an astrology poster for my room.” And my phone was open. Ads started popping up the next day. But I was amazed to find that I saw an astrology poster that I, myself, got excited about it — educationally, aesthetically — and I bought it. And it went up in her…

I only knew about this because this popped up on my phone (from the UK): What a disaster. What even can be said. We’d been having good fun prior to that, with Béla recording some of Claudia’s dance practice for review: And playing a game they got for Christmas, which teaches one to use chopsticks…

Sigh. Rather than thinking “Isn’t it amazing the holidays are over when it feels like I was just getting ready for Halloween,” it’s “It feels like yesterday I was just messaging you about the idiocy of pubs and schools opening…” Well. Here we are.