Tag Archives: list

Dec 31 2017

The Stuff You Actually Wanted to Know, 2017 Edition

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The Stuff You Actually Wanted to Know, 2017 Edition

It’s that time again: the post where I smuggle you behind the scenes of my blog so you can peek at the stuff other people are Googling.

I’m always fascinated by the search terms that bring traffic to this site, and they seem to get more interesting — and more extensive — every year. In 2017, almost every single one had to do with teaching, which sort of baffles me: I’ve only published two posts (maybe three, if you count this one) that are teaching-specific. But this post from last April continues to generate the most visits by far, with somewhere between 500 and 1000 unique views each week.

Usually I share the top 10 searches, but this year I’ll show you the ones I found most captivating. Continue reading →

Aug 10 2017

13 Things That Aren’t Weird in Silicon Valley

Posted by Moving 5 Comments
13 Things That Aren’t Weird in Silicon Valley

Before we moved here, I always pictured California as a just-like-the-movies SoCal paradise: perfectly manicured palm trees, glittering sidewalks dotted with stars, 85 breezy degrees forever and ever and ever.

But Silicon Valley is a whole different beast. If you were expecting excessively Botoxed platinum blondes or shirtless yogi dudes who travel via surfboard and only know the word “brah,” then you’ve come to the wrong place.

At first, I thought Silicon Valley looked almost like the Midwest — well, plus some mountains — in that everything seems fairly “normal” upon first glance. On the surface, there doesn’t appear to be a lot of flashy extravagance. Run-down strip malls line the roads. People ride bikes. There are no throngs of paparazzi following Kim Kardashian to dinner.

But once you’ve been here for a while, you begin to notice that it does NOT in fact resemble where you came from, and that the differences go far deeper than a mountainous landscape. To a Midwestern mind, there are some things that seem pretty unusual — but in Silicon Valley, they’re not weird at all. Continue reading →

Sep 21 2015

Waxing Nostalgic: 9 Tips for 9 Months

Posted by Family 2 Comments
Waxing Nostalgic: 9 Tips for 9 Months

If you graduated in the late ’90s, you might remember “Wear Sunscreen,” the faux commencement speech by columnist Mary Schmich. It was so ubiquitous that Baz Luhrmann even turned it into a song and all the radio stations ran it on repeat. The advice is timeless; I played it for my sophomores every year during our mini unit on aphorisms, and they always connected with several “truth nuggets,” as I called them. (The kids’ overwhelming favorite: “Do one thing every day that scares you.”)

The whole thing is a laundry list of beautiful suggestions, but the speech cleverly concludes with some advice about advice: “Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia.” And it’s right around now — when the joy and amazement and pain and fear surrounding the birth process has started to fade — that I start to miss being pregnant.

I always do.

In the middle of it, sometimes it seems to take forever. So many months with no alcohol, so many uncomfortable symptoms, so many nights wondering if you will EVER sleep again or if you might as well just move into the bathroom because you literally have to pee again AS you are flushing. Continue reading →

Jul 27 2015

California Drivin’

Posted by Musings & Misc. 5 Comments
California Drivin’

If you’re traveling to Ireland from America, you probably expect to alter your driving strategy to match the whole left-side-of-the-road thing. But I kind of figured that if you stayed within the U.S., driving would more or less stay the same.

Not so, as it turns out. At least not for me. Driving in California has been more of an adjustment than I anticipated. I’ve mentioned the U-turns and the cyclists — which were obvious from minute one — but there have been a whole host of new surprises now that we’ve been out here for a few weeks. Here are eight things this Michigander is still getting used to: Continue reading →

Jul 12 2015

My Mommy Must-Haves, Part II: The Newborn Phase

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My Mommy Must-Haves, Part II: The Newborn Phase

People will have you believe that you need a whole lot of GEAR to sustain that eight-pound being you just brought home from the hospital. And it was secretly a lot of fun to fill a multi-page baby registry with novelties and trinkets and doodads. When we owned our home in Michigan, we stocked the nursery with everything we thought she’d need until she was, like, five years old. But since we’re now renting a temporary house in California, there’s no pressure to paint and get all fancy for Baby Number Two. We don’t even know if we’ll still be here for his first birthday, so it seems pretty pointless to think beyond the first few months of babydom.

Unfortunately, “people” are semi-right. You kinda do need a lot of gear — just not nearly as much as we thought the first time around. So what do we ACTUALLY need to pull out of storage? What REALLY needs to be washed, cleaned, and prepared before we leave for the hospital? Again, not an expert — but feel free to listen in (and contribute) while I think through this list and try to get organized because OMG WE’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME.

I was able to narrow down my pregnancy comfort items to three, but had to expand my newborn must-haves to ten. The first five are obvious, but I think it’s a safe bet that most parents will need these: Continue reading →