@thekrakensays

@thekrakensays

Homeschool, Unschoolers & Gardner McKay

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Yes, you read that right. Homeschool. The alternate titles to this piece were “Whereupon Murph Won All The Things” or “Three Reasons I Might Die Before The End of This Week.” Homeschool. The child’s short, but lifelong, vociferously stated goal. Unschoolers. Who ever heard of that? Amiright? Yeah, that’s a thing. And I signed up for it. Florida Unschoolers. I even made myself an ID badge! And yeah, as we move beyond the carnage of losing my dream job in the place I’ve always wanted to live and the idyllic dog days of summer that came to crashing, thunderous, screeching end, there’s still some sun. I haven’t really kept up. I know. I didn’t have any words after Irma, for a while. I just did the things. In the wake of the catastrophe, though, my hurricane brain is starting to evaporate, and there’s finally some clarity on my horizon. In the

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Holiday Volunteering: Don’t Visit the Homeless

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holiday volunteering

I originally published this piece on holiday volunteering on November 18, 2016, right before Thanksgiving, when everyone was getting ready to “serve dinner to the homeless” at this or that shelter shortly after the election. We all wanted to connect and help. What I said then is still true, and it’s worth repeating. The world is a tense place right now. The past year has not been easy. We’re all fraught. Lots of stress and angst and anger. Lots of looking for ways to help and be of service. I know some of you are planning to take your kids and volunteer to serve food at shelters and other places for Thanksgiving, especially this year, of all the years, when we need to feel connected and like we are doing something, anything to make the world better. Volunteering to serve a holiday meal at a homeless shelter is not the answer. I’m

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Hurricane Brain In The Florida Keys After Irma

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Hurricane Brain. Post-Catastrophe Stress Disorder? Post-Natural-Disaster Stress Disorder? Whatever you want to call what happens in the aftermath of it all, it’s real. And for those of us in the Florida Keys, it’s a daily battle with it, even as life tries to right itself and the tourists return. It’s been 52 days since Hurricane Irma swept through Florida, reminding everyone that Mother Nature can be ferocious and leaving many of us in the hardest-hit areas like the Florida Keys with what I’ve been calling “hurricane brain.” To understand the after, you have to understand the before. Bear with me a minute? Everyone in Florida was watching Irma by Labor Day. In the Florida Keys, where July and August were dry, hot and lazy, we had been watching Irma since it was a wee little thunderstorm off the coast of Africa. We saw what Harvey did to Houston, and we

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10 Things to Know: Key West After Hurricane Irma

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10 Things to “Know Before You Go” to Key West After Hurricane Irma Visitors are starting to trickle back into Key West after Hurricane Irma swept through the islands just one month ago. The boil water alerts are over, and we’re no longer joking about building fires with pieces of driftwood from smashed boats and adding in the tears of the homeless because there’s no electric and no one’s brought a tarp for the roof. Mostly, people have cable back, at least a good part of the time. It’s getting better, and as we’ve been told, Key West is open now. The TDC (Tourist Development Council) is pouring millions into ad campaigns to draw folks back and make it seem like nothing happened (it happened, what you see on tv now and what you see when you get here will be worlds of difference). Local businesses are working around the

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Tweens Will Kill You AKA Don’t Buy An Urn

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I’m not actually sure what this is about, but maybe if I write it down, it will become clear to me (and you). If nothing else, it’s pretty funny. Also, tweens will kill you. A few weeks ago I had a brief run in with a woman who lives in our development, which made me a bit reluctant to send Murph to school next door to where I work. Talk about blessings in disguise? Given my reticence and after an unfortunate first impression when we went to “meet the teachers” at said public school, I was fully prepared to cave and give in to Murph’s most vociferous long-term goal of home schooling. My hair was still standing on end from the experience at the elementary school when I got the call that there was a space at St. Mary’s, the small Catholic school on the island. So instead of giving

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Campus Deaths Impact All of Us

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campus deaths

Campus deaths are not something that we like to think about. Having someone die at college is not something families wonder about on tours or that parents consider when they are saying goodbye as they drop their children off at the start of a semester. It isn’t something that the people who work on college campuses like to think about, either. I don’t. I’d much rather write how-to guides and what-to-do-when pieces when I write about college life and how to do it (and save money). We look at our vibrant, talented, and sometimes mischievous students and see bright futures, hope, and potential. But there are campus deaths. Faculty and staff sometimes pass, and students do die while they are in college, and when they do, it impacts everyone on campus, whether we knew the student or not. Last Monday night, I attended a memorial for a college student. He,

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At Work: Why Women Earn Less Than Men

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I had four conversations this week with women of different ages, different experience levels in different fields with different problems, though all were related to what they are earning. It made me want to scream. Now, I’m thinking about the wage gap that exists and how women are, at least in part, responsible for it. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that most smart and educated people are at least aware of the data that supports the statement that women earn about .79 to every dollar earned by a man. Moreover, there are many reasons, both obvious and more nuanced, that women earn less than men. It is a problem, and I am not arguing against that. However, some of the reasons are not so subtle. Some of them are because of the ways women themselves think, act and talk about money and getting paid. Woman #1 is a

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Key West Snorkeling: Sebago Water Adventures

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key west snorkeling sebago

Many of you on FB know that this week marked a milestone birthday for me. I don’t necessarily handle any birthdays well, and I am self-aware enough to know this, and the Circle of 5 knows this, and so while they tried to figure out how to help me not crawl into my shell and hide (on the last milestone birthday, I hid for two speaks and spoke to no one but Murph, who was 23 months old), I tried to figure out how to die to prevent the inevitable day. I mean, I guess packing up and moving to Key West and figuring out the whole rooster conundrum wasn’t enough of a midlife crisis. Murph, who had been Coral Camp at Reef Relief to learn about Key West snorkeling and reefs and aquaculture a bunch of times, suggested we go with Sebago (he’s been out on all of the big

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Key West Dining: Island Thyme Subs

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island thyme subs

We were heading out to Sandbar Sunday when I made the executive decision to give Island Thyme Subs a try. A co-worker, during the starvation week between food vendors here, told me to go try the Bahn Mi or the Chimi because she said they were fabulous, but things had come up, and I didn’t get there.  I had already sent a couple of friends as spies because I don’t think one shot at being amazing is very fair, and we all have an off day, and I’d hate to not do a review because I didn’t like something that’s usually spectacular. Plus, I told them not to tell me anything lest my opinion be colored. Finally, I promised myself that I would not hold the whole “subs” thing against them just because they don’t understand that they are making hoagies.     I will not lie. A sandwich shop in

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Blow Jobs, Tinder and Why I Don’t Date

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blow jobs

Yeah, I tried Tinder again. What can I say? It had been like six months. I’m in a new zip code, and I thought, what the hell? And yet again, I’m left wondering about that age-old question: What is it about men and blow jobs? Is that all they really want? I think it is. End of the day? If they could give themselves blow jobs, there would be no Tinder. There would be no birth control, no abortion debate, no issues about reproduction at all because they would cease to acknowledge women exist once we stopped breastfeeding them. Bob the Billionaire, a dubious member of my Circle of 5 who should have married me back when he had the chance but didn’t and so lingers on, living my quixotic, or chaotic, life vicariously from the sidelines, says there is a never-ending supply of unsatisfied middle-aged women who need sex and

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