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This is the archive page for my blog. I am now putting my writing here, and I have a newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.

Five Things I Learned From Alexis Johnson

My sister is this extraordinary person who I always fail to describe correctly. I start by telling people she has very blonde hair and very white teeth and very big boobs, and that all of this comes naturally to her. But then people picture this gum-chewing sorority-type, which my sister is not. I tell people that she is a wizard at video games (Nintendo variety only, for the most part), and that when she goes to settle Catan she always settles it. But then people see this nerdy Comic-Con chick with acne and see-through skin from staying in a basement too long, which is also not my sister.

Sketchbook: Willa

Willa is one of the most interesting, effusive people I know. I daydream about what it would be like if she was a comic book all the time. She would be very difficult to capture. Last night we had drinks together at my favorite neighborhood bar, and she was so beautiful it was sort of difficult to think.

Mom

The first thing I remember ever wanting to be was a mom. This was just one of the many ways in which I was a huge cliche as a female child -- others included my penchant for Babysitters' Club (and subsequent hatred of Goosebumps, even though Trevor Hancey liked Goosebumps and I was hopelessly in love with him), and the sheer number of Barbie dolls I had (hundreds. I did mutilate them when I got bored with them, but in a way I think that's a cliche too).

Flying Dogs

I can't sleep with my feet under the covers. This is because when I was very young, I believed that if my feet were covered up for too long (by anything -- socks, blankets, sleeping bags, sleeping cats, etc.), the bones inside my feet would melt.

Bee Sting

A few years ago, during a dark time, my then-therapist told me I should start cultivating a gratitude list. This sounded dumb to me, because obviously I had nothing to be grateful for. Everything about my life was the worst; things would frankly be better if I lived in a pit filled with dirt while tiny snakes slowly gnawed at my toenails.

College Radio

After spending altogether too much time researching the historical significance of letter-writing yesterday, I pulled out this book that gathers dust on my shelf called Obsolete. The book calls itself "An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By," which I guess is accurate -- it's an alphabetical list containing short, anecdotal histories of everything from adult book stores to landlines to, yes, writing letters. But it feels more like an Order of Service at a funeral: a symbol to mark that something once lived; a last-gasp effort to ease the onslaught of forgetting.

Letters

When my dad sat down to write his most recent book about Darwin, he did so with over a dozen written volumes so thick that they would have been as tall as me if you'd stacked them up. This was primary source material -- which might surprise you, because maybe you know that Darwin didn't publish that may actual books in his lifetime. But they weren't published books at all: these were the seemingly endless troves of Darwin's many obsessively-kept letters. There are 19 published volumes as of today; more are promised to come as the task of transcribing Darwin's correspondence continues to be an undertaking. (If you're curious -- and who can blame you -- most of this stuff is readily available online.)

Pardon My Correspondence

OK. I know that I just wrote a thing about writing lots of things, even when it's hard to write things, and then here I am today, appearing to not write any things. But that is just because I spent literally five and a half hours writing letters. One of these days I will write a thing about writing letters, but for now, this is what my desk looks like:

Does this kind of make you freak out? Piles of paper and scary drawers open and too many bottles of water? This is how I work BEST.

So in lieu of an entry, here are three excerpts from three separate letters. I wrote twelve. Letters. They go slowly downhill. That's what happens with typewriters.

I will be back with stuff for everyone to read, all the way through, tomorrow.

Writer's Block

Once I was experiencing writer's block at a coffee shop. That's is a very public place to experience writer's block, and in hind's sight, it looked silly. I was sitting there, drumming circles on the table with my thumbs, with my face screwed up into the shape of a fist. The coffee shop was busy, but I was on the moon: What am I writing about? What am I trying to say? What concept am I getting to here? What am I doing exactly? I didn't even notice when someone I sort of awkwardly know* came and sat down across from me.

Donald Sterling

OK. I'm going to tell you what I think about Donald Sterling. Just like everyone else on the Internet.

Raw Diet

I am rounding out day six of a weeklong raw diet. You probably stopped reading after you saw that sentence. You probably were like, "Last week, Sophie wrote an entire entry about yoga. I tried to forgive her for that. But now this? She should buy some Kabbalah beads and move to Los Angeles already."

Bad Yoga

Yoga is one of those culturally appropriative things that I can't really resist. Even though all the yoga classes I have ever taken are made up of students who look like they just walked out of a Kappa Kappa Delta yearbook photo, I like the breathing and the stretching and the slowing down of everything.

There Is Nothing Wrong With You

My roommate Hannah came back from a meditation retreat on Monday with a present for me. It was a book written by this smiley aging lesbian-type (I am judging her based on her author picture) named Cheri Huber titled, "Regardless of What You Were Taught to Believe, There Is Nothing Wrong With You." It really looks like one of those books you buy at a gas station. You know, the ones that are called "A Sister Is A Sneeze From God," or whatever. There's a monarch butterfly on the cover, and all the titling is in a font that can only be described as an unfortunate knock-off of Comic Sans.

Even People Who Love Computers

I am not outdoorsy. Don’t get me wrong, I like the outdoors. I see a river and appreciate its rivery-ness. Sometimes I say sentences like, “Wow. Aren’t trees something? They are so big and full of leaves!” And I feel very profound about it. I often exercise the common white person trope of making other people feel bad about not going outside. (“It’s such a beautiful day! What are you doing cooped up in this house when you could be out there in the sun?”)

Dad, Alexis, and Sophie, circa 1995. This was just before we saw a rattle snake, and just after Alexis was like, "Yeah, I think I'll wear this sick drop-waist dress and patent black Mary Janes on this hike." — Dad, Alexis, and Sophie, circa 1995. This was just before we saw a rattle snake, and just *after* Alexis was like, "Yeah, I think I'll wear this sick drop-waist dress and patent black Mary Janes on this hike."

It's Spring Break, so I am camping. Even though New Orleans heard that it was Spring Break for most teachers here and promptly decided it was time for Second Winter. I don't care. I'll wear wool socks.

See you Monday!

Leave The House

Yesterday started out hard. I won't go into detail here -- mostly because I am pretty sure that 90 percent of my blog is some kind of descriptive variation on "I'm feeling sad" -- but just know that I was in a bad mood.

Passover

I met Leah in an elevator. I'd seen her picture in the paper Teach for America Look Book (you know, just to make the already-sketchy organization a little more like a dating website), and she had been impossible to forget. Most of the TFA Corps members in the book (self included) looked like photocopied images of each other: toothy, buttoned down, and with an expression that somehow managed to say, "I gave the speech at my college graduation. What have YOU ever done?" Leah had chosen a picture where you could see her tattoos. She was wearing a cupcake-themed apron and holding a tray of baked goods, while she stuck out her tongue like she was on the cover of a Bikini Kill poster. So I was obsessed with her before I even met her.

Spring

Spring technically started on March 20, but there have been plenty of cold days since then. There were several nights in the interim between March 20 and now where I had to turn on the electric blanket (like an old person), and whine over the steadfast cruelty of the universe for being so, so cold. Now, finally, I can whine just as loudly that it is so, so hot and muggy. At last. In New Orleans, it is spring.

Unlearning "Don't Reinvent the Wheel"

Of the hundreds of professional development sessions I've been to in the past six years, I could count on my fingers the ones that didn't utilize the phrase, "Now, we don't want to reinvent the wheel here." When you hear someone say that, you know they're about to launch into a diatribe about a method someone else has come up with, and they're going to give you the tools to commandeer the method for yourself. This is obviously a godsend for teachers: using resources and ideas dreamed up by other teachers saves valuable planning time, and ensures that you're incorporating a method that has worked for someone else along the way.