This blog post brought to you by this song, on repeat forever:
Meghan Trainor - All About the Bass

I just got back from babysitting Sola, Harrison and Rocket in Colorado. The trip was the perfect shot in the arm; I feel eleventy-billion times more energized and focused than before I left.

The second day there (Thursday) I had to help Harrison with his math homework, which he seems to dread. He's in seventh grade and his class is learning how to add and subtract fractions expressed in various forms (mixed numbers, fractions, and decimals). He was panicked for the first hour or so, thinking that we wouldn't finish before bedtime and he'd get no time to go play outside. It took a lot of patience and ordering him to focus and try again, but once he picked up how to convert fractions to decimals by long division, he was so excited he seemed to forget about playing outside. There were many high-fives involved.

Like so.

After we finished and he was putting his papers away, he stopped, threw his arms in the air and yelled "Fractions!"
     It was gratifying to make so much progress with him, but in addition to that, even when he was having a hard time I enjoyed teaching him. The more I tutor math, the more I love it; I feel totally in my own element. Each person offers a new puzzle of finding the right way to communicate, and I'm good at it. So gratifying. I think I'm going to post some more flyers on campus offering math tutoring.

So that was Thursday; skipping ahead to Saturday, I went to the dog park with Julie and Denny -

I left off the blog post here but I'm not gonna finish it now. Too long ago. The dog park was awesome. The end.