A few years ago, I found myself face-to-face with the ugly beast that is burnout. My husband was working long hours and travelling for weeks at a time, I was working forty hours a week running a childcare business from home, and I was also taking care of our two daughters 24/7. Unsurprisingly, my migraines became more frequent and my mental health started to dwindle. Looking for answers, I turned to the internet. Dr. Google diagnosed me with burnout, and then proceeded to deliver my prescriptions. It was the height of the self-care revolution, and I was bombarded with instructions to factor in more “me-time” complete with face masks, bubble…

Seasoned school parents will be all too familiar with the problem we’re working through at the moment: the dreaded after-school meltdowns. Your child jumps into the car, hurls her bag onto the seat, and says she’s had a good day. The car trip home seems fine, but it’s as though crossing the threshold to your home triggers a sudden outpouring of emotion. Your child is weeping, screaming, stomping and sobbing as you try to figure out exactly what went wrong. After all, didn’t they just finish telling you they’d had a good day? The good news is that they probably weren’t lying; they really did have a good day at…

I’ve been learning something lately. Well, that’s not entirely true; re-learning is probably more accurate. I keep skimming through the theory, confident in my own understanding, and then drastically failing the practical element. Perhaps you know my struggle. At the end of every day, I drag my weary self to bed. It is an hour later than I had planned (okay, fine, two hours later), and yet I’m not really sure where that extra time went. I know where I had wanted it to go: yoga, writing, crochet. Maybe calling a friend. But it didn’t. It just went. Of course, I do know where it went, roughly. It went on…

I’m sure you’ve seen all the memes going around about isolation with kids and how it’s such a drag. While I’ve definitely had a good giggle at some of these, I have to question the underlying assumption that being isolated with kids is really the absolute worst. In fact, I’m finding that many of the things that normally make caring for kids overwhelming have actually become really helpful during isolation. That might sound totally counter-intuitive, but hear me out. Here’s why I think being isolated with kids is actually the best: Kids are a lot of work Having kids is basically just one long to-do list. They need food constantly,…

I’m not ashamed to admit that I am a complete and total word nerd. I just love language! I love learning new languages, and I love learning about the way culture is reflected in language. I love learning about how complex communication systems can be, and how we create shared meaning from those systems. I love it all. My favourite branch of language study (within English) is called etymology. I will never forget being at a friend’s 18th birthday party, having a passionate argument with someone I’d never met before, over whether the ‘com’ in compassion and the ‘con’ in concierge came from the same root word. While everyone else…

Meal planning has been a huge help to me the last couple of years, but I’m a very mood-based eater (and cook!) so choosing what to cook each week can easily become an agonizing process that can take me up to FOUR HOURS. Yes, really. At that point, I’m not really saving myself any time, I’m just lumping all the decision-making together. So, as I try to abdicate my role as the Queen of Over-complicating Things, I am going to have another go at simplifying my meal planning process. The positive side of being incredibly inefficient for a long time is that I have figured out some of the things…