Lady asked for my address to pick these up and then messaged me to say that the boxes were empty. It’s literally a post offering empty boxes, Kelly. Sorry you’re illiterate, I guess?

I have walked a dog along the median of this 2.5 lane width boulevard, against traffic, every year of the 18 years we’ve lived in our neighborhood. For the first time today, a man driving a truck (of course) sped up and got closer to us as he passed even though the parking lane was clear.

When the Midwestern urge to save that really good box meets the ADHD out of sight out of mind problem. (Now out of my basement and sitting on the curb until someone else takes them or they get cut up for recycling.)

What the fuuuuuck is making holes in all my school t-shirts in the same spot?! This one is BRAND NEW and replaced one that had a hole there. I AM SO ANNOYED.

I didn’t intend to spend the whole day doing yard work, but at least the weather was perfect. Hopefully this will be full of zinnias by mid summer 🤞🤞

This cabinet in my classroom completely fell apart today…in fairness it was already in rough shape when it was given to me as a hand-me-down, and it has lasted almost five years. Since a few friends asked me to post again if another need came up, here I am 🫣

I love how much this dog loves strawberries 🍓 🐕

It gives me a little bit of spiteful joy that Starbucks turns off commenting on these, because it lets me believe their new terrible chai recipe is universally -hated.

“The hell is this?”

With “good” insurance through my teaching job, we have to pay $2000 for my kid’s recent ER visit to rule out appendicitis. Truly, everything health-related feels like a racket in these dystopian times. (And by that I literally mean extortion that should be illegal.)

Teachers: At least it’s almost May… May:

I’m going to try to start a cabinet of free hygiene supplies in my classroom. If anyone feels like donating an item, I can message you the wishlist. Feels kind of weird to ask but I never mind when other people ask, so here we go.

The world is a mess. There’s still beauty all around, in spite of it all.

Watching a show and the couple is a 27 year old woman and a 39 year old man, who have been a couple for “more than ten years.” That math is GROSS, friends.

I asked an 8th grader to stop making beats on his desk this morning and he said “Don’t make me go alpha!”

A crisis was narrowly averted today after I almost sent the 13yo to lunch without his Dippin Dots money.

Overheard in 8th grade science today: What’s the thing? It lives in the ocean. It’s not a fish. It has the marbles in it.

Met with the principal today for my post-observation chat, and he said that I am really good at forming relationships with kids, even / especially those who often aren’t seen. I feel like if I could only be good at one thing in my life, I’d want it to be this.

I found out today that my after school student LGBTQIA club might not exist after this year, and for the most infuriatingly mundane reason - no funding for a bus to take kids home. Only sports teams will be allowed to use the buses next year. So no yearbook, no book club, no art club, no queer club.

I strategically grouped the kids who have been sleeping and slacking all quarter with each other for lab and this is the best day of my life 🤣🤣

I paid $20 to float on a raft in the pool at the Y for an hour while someone played meditation sounds and no one talked to me. Worth every cent.

This is going to be the longest six minutes of our lives, isn’t it? 🌕

My doctor told me my skin overall looks great and then said “I don’t think you see the sun.” She’s not wrong, but damn.

My primary care doctor’s office now has a sign at the door asking people not to enter if they might have measles. This is truly the most idiotic reality.

Also applicable to weeding / digging up some plants / mowing the grass 🫠 youtu.be/AthJVZozBF0?...

I don’t really care for our next door neighbors or the practice of keeping outdoor cats, but this little lady is admittedly very pretty. Or maybe it’s a gentleman?

There are already mosquitoes.

There’s FINALLY a video of me breaking a board! After earning my black belt once in the 90s and now halfway to (hopefully) earning it again. Better late than never! (This was meant to be a practice kick to set up the distance…I didn’t realize it was going to break immediately 😅😅)

My cranky 16yo found me after school & asked if I was going to watch the Artemis launch. I had to watch / listen en route to a scout meeting, but I’m so happy that he was interested and watched it. Maybe a bit of all the science and Space stuff I taught him over his long-ago years in scouts stuck. 🚀

My kid walked by while I was setting up my planner page for April, stopped to look at what I was doing, and said “You make those by hand??” I FEEL SO VALIDATED. 😅

Just explained the premise of Aquateen Hunger Force to my 13yo, and my GOD, the aughts were a time, weren’t they? (Exactly how high was everyone in the pitch room the day this got greenlit?)

The teacher who has ignored all my emails asking about my child’s missing or late work just sent a message informing me he has an F and asking me to “encourage” him to finish the year strong.

The weird weather has led to a proliferation of cut leaf coneflower volunteers in the front garden. Removed for the sake of their neighbors and posted for giving away 🎉

I think over my almost 20 years of owning a car with an alarm, I’ve set it off maybe five times. Someone on our block sets theirs off multiple times a day, almost every day.

The ears, y’all.

Let’s see how many of these deeply annoying invasive flowers I can dig up in a day…everything tall and dark green needs to go 🫠

Because of his Poor Choices, the teenager’s computer is in the living room for the foreseeable future, and I learned today that he is a VERY LOUD mouse-clicker. This is the “this hurts me more than it hurts you” punishment for people who don’t hit their kids. 🫠

16yo got caught in a huge ongoing lie on the very first day of Spring Break and has torched his screen privileges. You ever seen somebody ruin their own life?

Hey, Bluesky, maybe give us locked accounts or deal with the fake Gaza aid repost bots.

No heat at school today, even though temps were in the low 30s this morning & the HVAC was blowing in all the classrooms. Turns out it was some kind of pipe / antifreeze issue that also took out the cafeteria, so all they had to serve the kids were Uncrustables. Low key complete disaster of a day 🫣

Temperature is about to drop 46 degrees overnight…Midwest life, I guess 🙃

This just popped up in my feature photos. I think it’s from the first time we took Radar to get ice cream about a month after adopting him. He still loves it this much 🍦 ❤️ 🐕

The Wild Robot is a really cute film precisely engineered to emotionally destroy mothers of teenagers.

I forgot that Starbucks would give me a free drink for my birthday, so I paid AND it’s not good because they changed their chai recipe. 😒

@noirbettie.bsky.social If there’s ever a sequel to the horror deer anthology…

Today was not a great improvement over yesterday. I tried to take a one-hour nap after school and slept for three hours instead. Time change getting the best of me this year, apparently!

Today hit so hard that I truly thought it was Tuesday evening, and texted our TKD instructor that we were going to have to miss class due to afterschool club running late and homework. He messaged back, “Today is Monday.”

It’s the tail poking out of the covers for me 😅

Feeling grateful for a husband who is conscientious and kind, in a culture in which men often are neither. His mom had wrist surgery, and he’s driving an hour and a half each way tomorrow to take her a big container of soup that he made so she doesn’t have to try to cook one-handed.

It was also an excellent afternoon for animal viewing!