I love it when certain higher-end retailers offer a 15% discount for Teacher Appreciation Week. My dude, most of us STILL can’t afford your products even at 15% off & you probably know that, but hey, nice PR move.

I know Kent State was not the only tragedy that happened that year. But I also know that it’s an important part of my personal history in layers of ways that make me who I am. It haunts me. www.kent.edu/may4kentstat...

WHAT I HEARD A STUDENT ASK: Ms. N, what’s the word for a male woman? HOW I RESPONDED: Do you mean someone who was assigned male at birth, but is a woman? HOW THE STUDENT RESPONDED: No, like a mailman but it’s a woman. 🤦🏻‍♀️

WHAT—and I cannot emphasize this enough—the actual FUCK

“Go play baseball like you’re a 12-year-old kid and have fun.” Great advice for MANY areas of life from Stephen Vogt.

Someone needs to finally say it (hi, I’m someone): Guardians catcher Bo Naylor bears an uncanny resemblance to Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons. There. Now you can’t unsee it! You’re welcome.

Azaleas for days in Gordon Square right now 😍

Yesterday I bought a handheld vacuum & instantly fell in love with it & after I used it to get the cat hair off of my sofa I literally walked around the house with it looking for more things to vacuum & dear god I am so middle-aged.

Ok Guardians, love y’all but that was embarrassing.

I am currently hearing a bird I have never heard before before & please forgive me if you live in a high rise nearby because I am absolutely reaching for binoculars right now…I swear I am not creeping on anyone but this bird I must find.

Wait…I remembered the date wrong! I was actually only TWO months old, so it was even longer ago than I’d thought… 😭

Well, crap. Still, though, an impressive showing by Parker Messik.

I was five months old the last time a Cleveland baseball player pitched a no-hitter…

Our saga of home-seeking is finally drawing to a close. We are under contract, & we are relieved. Thank you for all of the good energy over the past few weeks…it was absolutely felt.

Hahahahaha despite making a ridiculously high offer, we got outbid on our third attempt in the past month to buy a home. Back to square one. This is brutal. 😭😭😭 We have to be out of our current home by May 4.

Ok so that place didn’t work out either…but the third time HAS to be a charm, right?

Just saw a dazed Cubs fan at the Steelyard Walmart. He’s definitely never coming back to Cleveland.

We are pretty sure we’ve found a place. Everybody please cross your fingers that it passes inspection on Tuesday!

A stranger at the grocery store told me I’m beautiful.

But really, I have no idea where we’re going to live 30 days from now. This is terrifying.

House flippers can rot in hell. That is all.

Lemon pound cake is on sale at Heinen’s, a Cleveland-area grocery chain. 😂 IYKYK

Spring Break reveals the weirdness of capitalism. This morning I got up at the time I normally get up, & just now I panicked for a second thinking I was supposed to be at work.

At a metal show at the Agora. Everyone looks old. Then I realize: I am old. Then I wonder: have I been aging alongside these same people at the same metal shows for the 20+ years I have been seeing bands here?

So no one really cares about a future where no one knows anything or can do anything independently, huh?

Credit where credit is due: they came out in the middle of some crappy weather & fixed whatever was wrong. Thanks, CPP!

I love trying to grade essays while my lights flicker & fridge sounds like it’s going to explode…c’mon, Cleveland Public Power…

I saw my neighbor staring at his flowerbed & I went to my desk & wrote a whole poem so now I want to thank him for the inspiration but I don’t speak his language so I will bring him a cantaloupe & tomorrow flowers will appear on my porch & this is how we communicate & this is why we are friends

⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️

Due to an editor who’s not great at their job, I’m on my way to Akron with my heart set on riding a giraffe.

Anyway, here is my cat enjoying an invisible ice cream cone.

I’ve been spending a lot of time away from social media. NGL I miss most of you who are seeing this & I hop on every now & then to see what everybody’s up to. Here’s photographic evidence of some of what else I’ve been up to:

Add this to the list of things I’ve learned from overhearing snippets of my students’ conversations: Nowadays when their periods sync up because they spend so much time together, they call it BLUETOOTHING.

My monstera not only produced a new leaf in the dead of winter, but now that it’s unfurling it appears to have achieved DOUBLE FENESTRATION! 💚💚💚

Let the record show that as of February 1, my Texas-born husband has declared that he is officially sick of this Cleveland winter.

Imagine.

Jesus Christ. That was an execution.

Not much, just sipping coffee & watching pretty much everything I’ve ever been called alarmist for coming true…

Studies keep finding that students learn less when they use technology (especially AI) & also that AI has no real benefit for any industry that’s been using it. Why, then, do school administrators keep insisting that we push it on our students?

Join me for this webinar on January 28! We’ll talk about ways to help AP Lit students level up their confidence & competence with poetry analysis. Register here: hubs.la/Q03-S-Cb0

The thing about working in education is that you will be surrounded by grown men who automatically address each other as “Coach” regardless of whether or not they are actually the coaches of anything.

In my early 20s, I went on a single date with a man who worked as a prison guard (forgive me; I was young & insecure). I am still haunted by the smug look on his face as he bragged “They told us we can do anything we want to the inmates as long as we yell ‘stop resisting’ while doing it.”

I made the greatest typo today: To-Do Lost

80% of owning a cat is touching your cat to wake it up because it’s sleeping so hard you think it’s dead.

I took Dr. Elizabeth Howard’s History of the English Language course at Kent State 25 years ago, & to this day the content & her delivery influence me personally & professionally. I looked her up this morning w/the intent to reach out & thank her, only to learn she passed away in 2021. Sigh.

I don’t know what to say. I’m just listening to PJ Harvey & cooking dinner & feeling like the contents of my skull are a combination of angry static & a constant yowling.

I would prefer that my tax dollars not be spent on mad kings flagrantly bypassing our own policies & breaking international laws to enact imperialism.

I mean, I’ll take it.

No hoomin, you no goez anneywarez

Idk who needs to hear this, but Twisted Sister has a great Christmas album.