Tuesday Slice: Lunching with the ladies

 

The meet-ups always seem to last for three hours.

Two hours in, the food has been eaten, leftovers boxed up.  Servers have refilled our water and tea, delivered and collected the check with a decent tip.  Still we chatter on, talking about work, books, health, kids;  money and retirement plans; the state of education, of government, of employment opportunities.  The phones only come out to look something up, share a picture, add to a TBR pile.  As the last hour winds down, we talk about how great it has been to sit like this, uninterrupted by work and family responsibilities.  We make vague, hopeful plans to do this again soon.

*************

One month after officially retiring, these meals have been bright spots in the murky middle between the last job and the next steps.  I value my friendships with these women.  The one-on-one time outside of work settings reaffirms that we have connections that transcend shared careers and decades-old experience.  Maybe now that I am taking back my time and energy, I can focus on expending both in continuing these soul-filling conversations.

Photo by Kaboompics, negativespace.co

Tuesday Slice: Red and blue in the backyard

The cardinal waited for a moment

     on the trapeze swing

     before making a play

     flying onto the feeder

     next to the dove, who brushed

     him away, to find a bug elsewhere.

Meanwhile, a bluejay waited for a moment

     in the bare tree above

     before making a play

     flying onto the slide's end

     next to a squirrel, who ignored

     him, letting him nab a peanut. 

Tuesday Slice: The nose wiggle

Those of us of a certain age remember the nose wiggle.  If you were like me, you practiced it in the mirror.

I woke up today at 230a, a list of tasks running through my brain, seemingly unending.  Laundry, major decluttering, putting together a garage sale for all of my now-unnecessary teaching materials and classroom decor, scheduling medical appointments, meeting up with friends, catching up on journaling and filling in my planner and writing thank-you notes and meal-planning....you get the idea.

I really wanted to nose-wiggle it done.  One twitch, and the mountain of clothes disappears.  Another, and my job applications are submitted.  Third twitch, and the menus would be filled in through August.

Alas, the nose twitching didn't produce any such effects.  I spent an hour and a half in bed, completing all of the New York Times games and starting my Amazon Prime Day cart, before my brain finally shut off enough to squeeze in a couple more hours of sleep.  The only magic happening will be the arrival of a few tubes of toothpaste and collagen for my coffee, appearing on my doorstep in a few days.

 

Tuesday Slice: Summer slug

 

Technically, I have been on summer break since May 29th.

Technically, I have also been retired from thirty-three years in public education since May 29th.

But here I am on June 16th, feeling like my summer break is just beginning.  The last three weeks of school went by in a blur of the usual end-of-year events rotating with retirement planning, parties, packing up my personal belongings, and leaving the library ready for the next caretaker, to include an eight-page document of transition information.

I treated myself to a retirement party on May 30th at The Oasis, a renowned restaurant here in Austin that overlooks Lake Travis.  It was a joyous celebration with over forty attendees from just about every stage of my educational career.  I was glowing for hours afterwards!  

No rest for the wicked, as they say, or apparently for retirees...the next day was spent doing laundry and preparing for a road trip from Dallas to Maryland, to move our daughter to where her husband has found permanent employment.  The van rental, apartment packing, and following road trip to and from lasted until this past Thursday, when we pulled into our driveway at six pm. 

Everyone who has been on a long trip knows the work that has to be done afterwards--laundry, restocking the fridge, laundry, watering the wilting plants, and more laundry.  I also have to face the mess that has evolved from bringing home my teaching stuff for the last time, as well as what we inherited from our daughter's move.

I had a certain amount of get-up-and-go for the first four days back.  The plants have mostly recovered, we have clean clothes to wear, and I cleaned a head of lettuce for salads.  Our library card needed renewing, and I checked out a just-for-me fantasy.  I put in an application for a job and spent a few hours looking for other opportunities.  The birdfeeder has been filled the last two days.  I made a brain-dump list of over forty things that need to be done, and highlighted them by importance.  I even took my son to see "Ponyo" at a theater, the start of the Ghibli Fest run of movies.

Today, though, I was barely able to pull on clothes.  I've done nothing but putter around the house.  I took an hour-long nap at eleven am.  I spent hours scrolling on my phone.  Haven't looked at the brain-dump tasks even once.  I keep giving myself a mental list of three things at a time to do, then do just one and slump down in a chair to play another game of solitaire on my phone.  Summer slug mode has finally set in...and I, for one, will fully embrace it this week.  I think I deserve at least that much.

Spiritual Journey Thursday: Every new beginning

 

Isaiah 43:18-19: "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?" 

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." — Seneca

May is a month of transition, especially for educators.  The school year is wrapping up; for the oldest students, there is the moving on to the next level.  Retirement announcements from across the district arrive daily in our inboxes.  Teachers who are staying are told about their assignments for the coming year.

I'm in the retirement group this year.

Someone asked if I was going to have a photo retrospective at my upcoming retirement party.  I thought about it for a moment, but decided the effort wasn't worth the emotional return.  I am not the same person I was 39 years ago when I started teaching.  I am happy to celebrate a three-decade long career, and I am grateful for the experience I've gained along the way.  I'm excited to see where this hard-earned knowledge will lead to next.  There's more work to be done--I am ready to do a new thing!

There are those in my circles who are facing much more difficult transitions--losing spouses, losing children.  Grief isn't prescriptive or linear.  The heart will dwell on the past as long as it sees fit.  At some point, though, there are beginnings, however bittersweet. First birthdays, holidays, gatherings in this new reality.  One foot in the shadow of loss, one foot in the sunshine that springs up, unbidden. You learn to honor the past without dwelling in it.

Today, I'm going to choose to be happy and grateful for the new things on my horizon.

What is ending for you, and what new beginnings does it bring?

What do you wish would end, and what do you wish would come next in your journey?

SOLSC '26 Day Thirty-one: Here's to fourteen years of trying

 

Thirty-one days, thirty-one posts for the

Slice of Life Story Challenge.

Fourteen years!

I had to go to my other blogging platform to double check the date, and there it was, thirty-one posts in March of 2013.  I've let that platform gather dust, but this one...at the very least, it gets shined up each March.

Fourteen years.  It's longer than any job I've performed, or campus where I was located.  It's longer than most habits I've attempted to establish, except for brushing my teeth and making my bed.

I decided to take a peek at my first year of participating.  In 2013 we were challenged to write about life outside of the classroom.  Here are the first ten topics I wrote about:

1)  Shopping for yarn

2)  The school carnival

3)  Morning quiet time

4)  What I live for

5)  Birthday gifts

6)  Technology woes

7)  Wonky week before Spring Break

8)  Saying goodbye before Spring Break

9)  The pride of a military BRAT

10)  My messy, but functional, home

Other than shopping for yarn (I've forced myself to use what I've got these days), I could still write about all of these topics!  In fact, I'm pretty sure I've duplicated several of them over the years.

Back then, I wrote really long posts.  Now, not so much.  Do I have less to say, or am I just getting better at being pithy?  Either way, I'm glad this is one habit that has stuck.  Looking forward to number fifteen in 2027.  And congratulations to all you Slicers who stuck it out with me in 2026!

SOLSC '26 Day Thirty: FOMO and fiesta

 

Thirty-one days, thirty-one posts for the

Slice of Life Story Challenge

My librarian friends are posting pictures from the statewide library conference, and I'm experiencing a bit of FOMO.  Which is weird, because I decided long before I knew I'd be on medical leave that I wasn't going to the conference.  The timing was odd--a Sunday through Tuesday conference--and I really didn't relish the thought of going back to work on a Wednesday after the exhaustion I usually experience from long days of peopling.  It's also my last year in the school library, and I want to leave a decent amount of funds in the activity account for the next librarian.

The pictures are reminding me of all the learning that goes on in this conference:  the introductions to new books and authors, programming ideas, connecting with the vendors we use for furniture, collection development, databases.  Reminders that we librarians are so much more than a friendly face at the circulation desk.  But I won't be a school librarian next year; it's an identity shift that will take awhile to get used to, and not attending the conference is a small nudge to start thinking that way.

So what did I do to lift my spirits a bit?  I started planning my retirement/ 60th birthday party!  I spoke with the event coordinator at my chosen restaurant, and put out a "soft" invitation to friends on Facebook to get a headcount.  The responses I've received have been heartwarming. I've been fortunate to work with so many wonderful people over the last thirty-nine years; I can't wait to celebrate with them.