Turns out your first year of teaching middle school ELA is a lot of work. Um, a lot. I can’t really emphasize that enough. And I loved it so dang much, I can’t wait to do it all over again this fall. (Not to get ahead of myself, here. School ended last week, and I’m ready to fully embrace my summer vacation.)

I was about to blame the upkeep (or lack thereof) of this blog on work, but…wait…it’s been TWO YEARS since I updated this thing? Mercy. (Hey, I was able to keep my Instagram account pretty lively, at least – you can always check in over there to follow my exciting and wholesome lifestyle.)

WELL, GUESS WHAT.

I’m going to at LEAST update this website with this here blog entry. Hello! Let’s see, what can I talk about…well, the coming months will be filled with trapeze-teaching and performing, gardening, swimming, dog-walking, tea-drinking, reading, writing, lesson planning (eventually), looking at my lovely family’s faces and holding conversations, and…querying literary agents again. Yikes. That last one might take me awhile, but I’m determined. It’s taken literal years of work and revisions, but I’ve finished my MG novel and I’m ready to shepherd this thing into the world as best I can. That’s kind of scary to type out loud, but there it is.

In the meantime, here’s a photo encapsulating how I’m just living my best life. That’s a metal straw, because I’m not about to be choking some poor seagull in the neck with my plastic garbage. Also, please note that while the “Passionfruit” flavor of La Croix pictured here is kind of gross, it’s what I had at the time. (At least it wasn’t Coconut.)