Surviving My Education — I am telling myself I cannot look at another number I cannot decipher letters that stand in bold attention In lines of fascist dictatorships that insist a p and an n and an x must comingle with 1s and 2s and 3s when really they are just names for…

Please save me Ms. Pandya — I had my annual this morning. I never know whether to look forward to these sessions or dread them. Every time I arrive for an appointment there’s a different hygienist. They all have a different style. So I have to mentally prepare for anything. Some hygienists have the sweetest bedside…

We’ll always remember — From as far back as I can squeeze any memories out of my tired brain, I can see Karen’s house clearly in my mind. It was a modest farmhouse, white and always freshly painted, so it looked clean as the whites of the laundry gently swaying against the wash line…

I will never find all the weed seeds before spring — I love harvest time. Don’t you? By my age, I’m a well experienced farmer. My cheese pumpkins and butternut squash grow so huge that I could live on them all winter long. If the food supply chain suddenly permanently broke, I will not starve. I save seeds from year to…

It Was a Tough Choice — Deliberation was intense. We added two new judges to the judging panel — Liv Pasquarelli and Mackenzie Saunders. Along with Gary Chapin and Amy Sea, we set about to select the winners. As before, we reminded ourselves what we were looking for in this contest. Four criteria were used. Originality…

Just Another of the Many Great Services From Your Mudditors — Calling all humorists! Calling all comedy writers! Calling all satirists! MuddyUm invites you to come aboard the ship that is setting sail to the Twitterverse! We now feature #DailyMuddyFunny on MuddyUm’s Twitter account. What does that even mean, you ask? It means, every day our editors will pick their favorite…

Did we miss any? — Here they are! The December entries. Check back on the 15th for the finalists and Grand Prize Winner. For the category PABLUM: From a grain of infinity Better Bunker Snacks and Hacks Pablum: the Swiss army knife of your secret pantrymedium.com From Andrew Rodwin Bursting the World’s Bubbles, One Prick at A Time Pablum!’s venture capital pitch deckmedium.com From Matthew Thiele Stop Leaving Baby Cereal Out for Grown Men to Eat Man vs. mushmedium.com

You Can Read or You Can Write About Reading — What can we learn when we set larger than life goals for ourselves? I’m in my fourth full year of setting this goal for myself. The goal is to read 200 books each year. I began setting that goal when I woke up one day and realized a couple of…