Stuff We Like :: 3.31.17

I have to be honest: Most of what I’m doing this week is trying to finish the spring issue of the magazine! Still, you know what they say about all work and no play.

around the web

So true: Kon-Mari for homeschooling moms

This article really hit home with me—I love the easiness of the LIKE button, but I miss the conversations we’ve given up because of it. (Toward that end, I’m setting up a little forum for subscribers that I hope to have ready to roll out with the spring issue — but we’ll see!)

When I read The Handmaid’s Tale, I seriously thought it was the scariest book I’d ever read. It seems even scarier now. I’ve often wondered how Margaret Atwood feels about her dystopia in light of current world events, and now I know! (Aside: Are you planning to watch the TV adaptation? A year ago, I would have been all-in, but now I’m worried that it will just freak me out.)

at home/school/life

on the blog: It’s your last chance to vote for the MOST HOMESCHOOLERY THING EVER.

one year ago: Ideas for celebrating every day of National Poetry Month

two years ago: 3 Fun Ways to Welcome Spring to Your Homeschool

three years ago: Sentimental flashback: How this magazine got started

reading list

Colors of Madeleine update: I finished The Cracks in the Kingdom and am moving on to A Tangle of Gold. As soon as the spring issue ships. (I guessed the big twist — I made Suzanne tell me that I was right — but that didn't make it any less brilliant. I'm enjoying these books so much.)

My poor abandoned children, who are cruelly forced to entertain themselves while I am in get-this-issue done mode, are reading The Wingsnatchers and say, “It is really good, which you would know if you were reading it with us.” So parenting fail, but at least they are reading something good!

Meanwhile, in academic reading: Ancient Greece: From Prehistory to Hellenistic Times, The Scarlet Letter, Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography, A Room of One’s Own

at home

I have discovered this British version of House Hunters on Netflix, where people shop for houses in the English countryside, and I tell you, it is like balm for the soul.

Again this week, we are subsisting on Trader Joe’s Mandarin Orange Chicken and takeout Mexican, and we did not actually make cookies this week. (We bought the frozen macarons at TJ’s instead.) This is how all my big deadlines end up. 

I’m thinking of making this Amaretto Olive Oil Cake for Seder this year. But there has to be something chocolate, too, right?

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