Barbara Thompson

I do not have a history of success at growing things outside. I remember our first year at our first house I planted gladiolas. That was an entire failure. Wait. It was hollyhocks. Different flower, same failure. I planted lots of stuff with the kids over the years. Nothing grew. Ever. I gave up. I […]

Were you afraid of your basement when you were a kid? I was. Our chest freezer was as far from the bottom of the stairs as possible (roughly 100 yards, by my estimation), and when my mom sent me down to get a frozen something it was like running a gauntlet. I don’t remember being

I went to elementary school today and tried cutting through the library (it is not a hall! Walk around! I know this, but…I was being lame). I am so glad I stepped inside, because it was filled with giant cardboard constructions. I LOOOOOVE making things out of big boxes. Alexander said (in recent times) that

A kid walked in first thing in the morning and announced, “It smells like the first day of school in here!” (New air freshener scent?) I always ask the kids a random question about me – winner gets to take the attendance slip to the office. I have been bopping around the same kids quite

We air fryer-ed bloomin’ onions for lunch. It was moderately hilarious how hard it is to cut and bread an onion, but ended up tasty enough to make a second. Keith wasn’t feeling great, so we celebrated the day with lots of TV. The boys checked in and all was well. I hope you had

It was warm and sunny today – indeed very summery. It was time to get out there and start taking care of everything. I don’t cut down the flower beds in the fall, because I always hope that the “winter interest” of such leftovers will actually be a thing. We have a lot of trees

This has been an amazing week of subbing. Three absolutely great days in a row – when one is usually just a total win. I happily went off to elementary school art this morning. You remember the art from a month or so ago? Same teacher. Um…turned out to be a not the same day

No, we aren’t on another trip. We saw the musical “Memphis” tonight at the Artistry Theater in Bloomington. It was a very good show about desegregating music in the 1950s in Memphis. The cast was really strong, and it is a very enjoyable show. The downside to this production was it was too quiet, which

It was a super great day at work. I was subbing in one of my favorite places. The kids (8th graders!) this teacher works with are (surprisingly) great (a testament to the teacher’s skills) (okay, they are, of course, people and make their own decisions, but she has helped them figure out how to be

I made an early appointment downtown St. Paul for a kidney ultrasound, another step in trying to figure out my high blood pressure. I couldn’t eat or drink before the test, so I thought the earlier, the better. When I got to the parking lot at 6:30am, I was the second car in the lot.