Our front yard originally had this triangular patch of ivy lined with white rock, impaled with a gigantic flag pole as well as a street lamp. My dad and husband ripped out the ivy, hauled away the rocks, and I designated the triangle to be a “experimental zone.” I vowed to plant whatever I wanted, hoping for the best in our clayey soil, and just see what happens. Over time, it’s become the highlight of our front yard. This was where we’d frequently find Bingo, sometimes camouflaged in a wine barrel planter, other times pretending to be a wild jungle cat behind the orange sedge. Sadly, Bingo was one of the many casualties of 2020, along with the orange sedge.
Bingo in a Barrel 
RIP Bingo, ? – February 29, 2020
In another sense, this blog was a casualty of 2020. This is also a blog of many rebirths. It started as a blogspot in 2005, abandoned when I started a teacher credential program in 2006. I made a few half-hearted attempts at a teacher blog, including visiting a hypnotherapist, but the drafts I wrote were so filled with rage and revolutionary zeal I could hardly bring myself to reread them, let alone send them forth into the world.
The idea for this blog name came to me a few years ago, while teaching a unit on the Gilded Age and feeling particularly inspired by our other cat, $innamon (yes, the spelling is intentional, and yes, she is still laying around). I purchased the domain name and shelled out monies each year to hold on to it, thinking that paying for the blog would generate the mana to write. It did not. I embarked on a journey of procrastination, which was supposed to end when 2020 began. I had a new job, and a plan: I’d try out different 30-day challenges and write about them. And then I just didn’t.
My excuses for not writing have been plentiful and hollow. One of the bigger guys has been: what to write about? The advice is to write what you know, and I know education. I also know that the thought of writing about education full-time drives me crazy and gives me migraines and sends me into deep spirals of despair-tipped anger. I know running, but the world does not need another running blog. I cook and garden and knit and engage in lots of the activities that women of my age and station are said to engage in, but not to an extent that I’d write about them. Like I said, my excuses are plentiful.
So. The calendar has been turned to 2021, and this blog shall henceforth be known as an experimental zone. I don’t know what I’ll write about, nor do I know if the writing will be any good. My plan well thought-out, nuanced, and informed by science: I shall write, about something, a couple days each week. I will put it out there, like the experimental zone in our front yard, and just see what develops.