Yesssssssssssssssss

oh my god its got pompoms!

yes, or herbs - stuff like chives, rosemary, basil, cilantro is pretty hardy and adding that to rice and beans keeps it from being unbearably bland (and if you've got very limited balcony space, they'll go further than veggies.)

At least two.

This is like 75% your fault.

I maintain buldak elotes are best buldak.

I'm terrified to give my characters pets because frankly, most of them would be terrible pet owners. (omg Itza, you cannot take that cat on an airship, he's going to fall off and die.)

Yes but we can't afford to miss one paycheck. Hell, we eat ramen for a week when someone has to miss work for a Drs appointment or a federal holiday (unpaid for contractors.)

I'm cool with that. Rand is annoying.

Wait, calling it trash is unfair. It's tropey and fun for all that it's about stuff that's bothering me. But it's not trash.

That sounds amazing. Mine is not that literary, it's magic school trash.

Yup. :(

Ow! It sounds like it needs to go to machine jail for a while.

(But I also think this is just unreasonable to expect on an individual basis when teachers already have SO MUCH STUFF on them.) There isn't an easy answer.

I feel like language arts education needs to be more flexible with finding books that are more engaging, but have enough to them that you can really dig into what makes them work- and that's what you need to teach- how to really LOOK at what you read.

Yeah, that's definitely frustrating. I didn't enjoy most of our assigned reading books. (I put Johnny Tremaine in a Cuisinart and used it for paper mache the weekend we finished that in 6th grade.) But I don't think the answer is to not read, or to only read excerpts.