Category: Essay
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Soup: Easy Peasy (Really)
Let’s cut right to the chase. It’s cold. Really cold. Like single digit cold (as of this morning), and this is not Fargo, North Dakota. It’s Rockville, Maryland, suburb of Washington, DC. Even though the temperature climbed significantly during the day, it was blistering cold walking to my car at 5:15 today. #bombcyclone #teacherslovesnowdaystoo I’m…
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A New Year, A New Me
A new school year has begun, and week two is in the books, or grade books as it were. However, my school year began a day late, due to a back injury that sidelined me for the first day of school. Calling in sick has never been easy for me; I was even more…
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In Remembrance
On a recent Saturday morning, my husband presented me with several boxes of “stuff” from the garage and politely asked me to go through them. I believe my agreement to do so was in part due to some compromise where he agreed to do something for me that he didn’t want to do either. And…
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Chicken and Waffles, Minus the Waffles
Today marks the end of Week One of my kitchen renovation. I use the word renovation loosely, however, as it is more of a building of a kitchen rather than a renovation of a kitchen. As documented in my essay “A Unique July 13th”, it’s a gut job, not a simple matter of new appliances…
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A Unique July 13th
Today is my younger daughter’s 25th birthday. Any other July 13th, I would have been busy baking her a beautiful birthday cake and cooking one of her favorite meals. I would have spent all day in the kitchen, making everything from scratch, chopping, dicing, slicing, and mixing away while watching my favorite cooking shows on…
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Should I Put an Egg on It?
I am a very adventurous eater. I will taste just about anything, and my list of things I hate is very, very small. Lychee nuts and eggs. Yes, eggs. I don’t eat eggs unless they are beaten up in a cake batter or the whites have been whipped into a meringue sitting on top of…
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Irish Soda Bread in a Hurry
My spring break is drawing to a close. For once I made sure I could really relax and not have a ton of school work hanging over my head the whole time. It made a huge difference. I had a great visit with my older daughter, did a bit of spring cleaning, baked an elaborate…
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Make New Friends, but Keep the Old by Michelle Blanchard Ardillo
Originally posted on Nerdy Book Club: Over Christmas break, I gave my 7th and 8th grade students a one-sentence homework assignment: read a good book. I told them it didn’t matter if it was long or short, above or below grade level, fiction or non-fiction. Just read a good book.? Upon their return to school,…
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Carbs: 6, Me: 0
We are nearing the end of the first quarter of 2017. Before I became a teacher, the end of the quarter meant additional stress to get commercial real estate leasing agreements negotiated and signed. Now that I’m a middle school language arts teacher, the end of the quarter means essays and tests to grade, report…
Michelle Blanchard Ardillo 