Closing Time

 It's not that I've stopped writing.  I've just stopped writing here.

Life is just as crazy as it ever was, but it's not making me crazy anymore. Here's why.  

How time does go by

 It's twenty-four years now.

It was a typical day, really, and I couldn't understand why I was crushed with sadness on my drive home, until I recognized the date. 

Every year, it's the same. 

Love you, Dad.

döstädning

 "Swedish death cleaning"

Apparently, there's at least one book out there about this, and I've seen multiple articles, though I've never bothered to read much past the headlines.  It's a simple idea, really: If you were gone, as in dead and gone, not just on vacation, would the things you're leaving behind be a burden?  

As the daughter of a dedicated pack rat, I am opposed to keeping stuff to just to keep it. I do not believe in "I'll use it someday," especially if it's been sitting in a box or a drawer or a cupboard for more than 10 years now.   Still, in a big house like ours, it's easy for stuff to accumulate because you can just put it up on a shelf and not even see it.  This is how you end up buried in stuff!

My self-appointed job this summer: döstädning, made possible by DH moving his office upstairs into DS2's room, which will be vacant until he gets his next leave and can come visit, and only the Army knows when that will be.  

It's going well, because I have no distractions and can work at my own pace, and I can be ruthless since there's no one else around to say, But don't you think...?  No, I don't.  Out it goes!

The downstairs is pretty much done except for the biggest job, which I'm saving till everything else is settled: the photo albums.  But cleaning out the guest room was huge, because it had become the junk room. We weren't expecting any guests over the pandemic, so no big deal, right?  Plus, all of our go-to donation places were closed, and I didn't want to just throw away good, some very good, stuff, so it just sat there, some of it for over year. 

But now, St. Vincent de Paul is accepting donations again, and I've made two trips there, plus a trip to Bookman's, and another trip to the solid waste recycling center.  DS1 switched around some furniture and there's more space in the guest room now than in the entire history of the guest room -- and even the closet is mostly passable.  I have a few targeted donations that I have to arrange, so those items are waiting in the closet.

It's lovely just methodically going through boxes and bookshelves and cupboards and closets, sorting everything: keep-donate-pitch.  I eliminated seven (!!!) boxes from my closet, at least 4 of which moved with me from Massachusetts over 25 years ago.  I have a much smaller stack of stuff that will fit in bottom drawer of my night stand, so here's to using furniture to hold things I actually like, that have meaning! 

Some part me is arguing, "You're erasing your own past!" when I pitch letters from high school friends or sweethearts, or my super dramatic adolescent journals.  Projecting time forward, I thought, Do I want anyone else to read this?  Do **I** even want to read this, ever again?  No, and no, especially the 2-inch thick file of legal bickering that ended my first marriage, or the tortured letters I wrote after a  (different) devastating break-up.  I do thank God I never sent them -- they were intended to be therapeutic, but looking back, I'm not so sure they were.  Rumination contributes to depression, but I didn't know that back then.  

The photo project will take a lot longer, although I've pitched at least a half-dozen old albums full of murky red-tinted photos that were not-great to begin with.  I've salvaged a few here and there, but I don't need, for example, full documentation of the construction of the deck on my old place in Natick, even if it was a really nice deck.  And no one needs scads of photos of people they haven't talked to in over  30 years, right?  They're not part of my life any more, and there's no reason to weigh myself down -- literally -- with photo albums from the times they were.  

It will be harder to go through the albums from my own family, but I know I can at least eliminate duplicates and bad pictures.  Back before digital cameras, if you weren't a serious photographer, you'd use your point-and-shoot, develop the film, and get your prints.  I never developed (pun unintended) the habit of pruning out bad shots back then, although if my fingers were in front of the lens, I wouldn't keep those prints!  But I know there are a lot of truly mediocre - or worse - landscape shots and architecture shots and honestly, no one needs those if they're not showing something specific. 

Sorting is the first phase, then will come scanning, and then figuring out long-term storage. I suppose if I can reorganize 20+ photo albums into a half dozen or so, that's not too bad, but I'm not thrilled with that idea.  Eventually, I want to move to a smaller house, and one reason I'm doing this is to prove to myself I don't need a house this big to hold all my stuff! 

Now I'll just have to resist filling up all the newly-empty spaces I've made.  

suddenly, summer!

 Technically I have one more day -- maybe an hour or two -- before I can officially declare it summer, but I'm jumping the gun anyway: no more classes!  As far as I'm concerned, that's summer. The entire school year was a surreal experience.  Most individual days seemed very, very long, but by the end, I had a constant feeling of Wait, what? It can't be over yet!

I was very productive over spring break and that really helped the end of the year go more smoothly, plus I was able to use materials I developed at the end of last year, too.  But I still had to develop new work for the last chapters of our religion text -- we finished the book this year, a first.  I also worked up a bunch of new material for the 7th grade, since we didn't have a field trip this year, that gave us 2 weeks of extra time.  Not that we would go on a 2-week field trip, but I usually reviewed for at least a week or so before we left.  Here's hoping we get to go next year, but I'm not holding my breath.

Some things were nearly normal: 8th grade graduation, and 7th grade field day.  We even had an all-school mass on the last day of school with all grades in attendance.  But everyone still had to wear masks right up through the last day of school, although by the end they were "optional" when we were outside.  I pretty much gave up wearing mine except when I was working in close contact with the students; since I was vaccinated months ago, there was really no point.  I did my lecturing from the back of the class well away from the students, who were all masked and facing away from me anyway. 

I'm most looking forward to staying in my own room to teach, all day, next year, and sending the students out for their other subjects and specials.  The hardware problems became so routine they only occasionally made me want to scream, but with any luck, that particular requirement will be shelved.  We all noticed how the 7th graders seemed stalled in their development -- they didn't have to learn how to be organized or how to get where they needed to be, because this year, the teachers came to them.  It's going to be a big adjustment for them next year, but a necessary one. 

There were some upsides in spite of the craziness:  I have a nearly completely paperless classroom now.  In addition to saving me the time and the school the expense of printing out worksheets, I also don't have to collect them,  keep them organized, and hand them back. This is a huge time saving! I didn't have a single no-name paper to deal with this year, and I also didn't have a single instance of "I can't read your hand writing, do this again."  No one's work was lost, and no one claimed to have handed something in when they hadn't (Google Classroom keeps track of submissions quite well.)  Grading was much easier, once I moved everything into the appropriate Google form or document.  I'm not brushing off the effort that took, which was substantial, but the time saving was substantial.  Most days I arrived at school about 7:15-7:20AM, whereas in past years I often routinely arrived before 7AM because I needed the time to print and staple worksheets for the students.  

Another big change came as the result of our dismissal process.  We loaded students into their parents' cars individually, since we were limiting people on campus and didn't want people hanging out in the parking lots.  At first I was only on the car line twice a week, but that morphed into every day because I preferred being on the car line to waiting under the canopy with the mass of students trying to keep them relatively quiet.  It wasn't actually too long a process, but I was still out there long enough every day to get a hysterical tan pattern on my feet from my sandal straps, and to bring out the blonde highlights in my hair.  We were always done by 3:30PM and most days, I just went right home.  Some days I hung out with my partner teacher dealing with some issue or other, but most days I was home some time around 4PM.  Since everything is online, there was no particular reason to hang around, so I didn't. 

I kept up my "do something every day" practice and it made such a tremendous difference. I was all caught up with my grading well before the last day of school, and that gave me time to clean out both my closets, all my cabinets, and even my desk!  For  some reason people keep giving me fancy note pads and I must have at least 10 now, but I finally got rid of some things I was keeping for no good reason. I even pitched the expandable file I've had since my very first year of teaching.  It was held together with duct tape and basically on life support, and since I didn't need it even once this year, out it went.  I did not mourn the end of that particular era!  It's always a good feeling to get organized.  

Another innovation: after years of printing out a monthly calendar and planning classes on paper, I finally put it all into a spreadsheet.  It's so much easier and I can't misplace it, I keep thinking, why didn't I do this before?  Planning next year is going to be so much easier!  I'm holding on to the hope that everything will be easier next year.  I won't have to develop curriculum every single day.  I won't have to move from classroom to classroom, the students will come to me.  I will be able to take my classes to the science lab -- or at least, if I decide to do labs in the classroom, I'll only have to set up once, because they'll be in my own classroom!  I can re-use the individual kits I made for the 8th graders' magnet lab and the 7th graders' minerals explorations -- those were great! It's so good to recognize all that work and know the effort wasn't wasted.  

On the home front, DS1 is settling in to his new job position and really, really appreciates being out of his old job.  He is making more money but the best part is the work itself is more challenging, plus he really appreciates not having to deal with irate vendors or truck drivers anymore.  DD graduated and we had an extremely informal photo shoot at the Riparian Preserve, repurposing my cap and gown from my master's degree ceremony (now four years ago!): 

We had a great day with her room mates.  The four of us went out to brunch at Agritopia and I took them for their first-ever wine tasting at Garage-East.  She had a couple of weeks to relax and then started working full time as a lab tech at company that does drug testing.  It's somewhat ironic given her political leanings, but she understands she needs to work, and so she is.  

DS2 was able to come home for a quick leave before heading to Florida for the rest of his training.  I spoiled him with all his favorites as much as I could, although after months of mediocre cafeteria food, all it took was a decent fast-food French fry: 

DH took him car shopping, since the only reason he got leave was so he could get a car to drive to his new assignment:

He took off last Thursday on the cross-country drive, and arrived Saturday outside New Orleans for a last day of family time before reporting in on Sunday.  His Louisiana cousins are excited to have him so close by (less than 4 hours' drive), and I'm happy for him, too.  Odds are good he'll be able to be with family for Thanksgiving this year!

DH has been working mostly insane hours but in just the past few days it has let up.  We have summer plans in place for CT, including Mystic, and the Cape, resigning ourselves to having to drive through brutal summer traffic.  We are so excited to be seeing our families again!  I have my usual slew of doctor's appointments both before and after we go, but no big projects are planned for this summer beyond a thorough cleaning of closets that have been collecting stuff since the last time I did it.  I may even get to read a few books! 

 

All downhill from here

 I didn't mean to go so long without posting.  The temptation is to say there's nothing going on, because really, it's just the daily grind and then some.   It's life.

In one week we went from low 60s to mid-to-high 90s - spring is here! Today is my first day of spring break week, finally -- Easter was yesterday.   It was a good day, but busy-busy leading up to it, with the usual shopping and cooking and finishing up school stuff before break.  All done, now!  

I can theoretically relax, but I don't think I know how.  I feel weird when I'm not working on new curriculum or lesson planning or grading.  It's just how life is, now.  For many months I would take off a few evenings during the week but I figured out that was a huge mistake, because everything would pile up and make the weekends hellish.  So I've been consistently putting in a few hours of something every evening... except for the past four days.   I've had a lot to do to keep me busy but when I plunk myself down on the couch, I find myself chasing down internet rabbit holes because I don't really have to do anything else. 

Kids are fine. Oldest is poised to start a new job role with a big pay raise.  Youngest is enjoying challenging studies, finally.  Middle is about to graduate and is sort of, kind of looking for a job.   I have joked that two out of three ain't bad, but Middle offspring will find her own way, I'm sure.  It will work out. 

DH is working from home almost all the time, still, which is good because he doesn't have to commute, but bad because he works all the time.  Oldest is also working from home, and having them both here will definitely put a crimp in getting renovations done this summer.  We'll see.  

We have no plans right now, but hope to see family this summer.  I'm fully vaccinated and have been for about a month now; DH is due for his second dose shortly.  The hope is that will make it easier for us to travel, but who know what the rules will be by then.  Covid numbers are trending way down in AZ currently but I have no idea what's going on out on the east coast. We'd like to see family this summer.  Here's hoping.

I sense in myself a forward-looking habit, skipping the next 7 weeks of school entirely and going straight to summer vacation.  Knowing we're almost done with this insane year is so encouraging, but I'm worried I'm going to hit a wall before the school year is over.   It's probably not healthy that I'm counting down the days, but so far it seems helpful.

Anyway, in the rest of this vacation, I am going to do as much planning and prep as I can, especially since I have only one assignment left to grade, and it's not a big deal.  The hope is that will make the rest of this year easier.  

One reason I feel optimistic now is because I have the sense of having turned the corner at school: science fair is long over, but also, I'm finished with the awesome but labor-intensive 8th grade chemistry curriculum.  This year's constraints required me to bring the lab into both 8th grade classrooms, so it literally required twice as much setup as in the past.  Plus, I moved everything online, so that required printing and laminating lab instructions so no Chromebooks were damaged by all the liquids we were using.  It was massively successful, but my favorite part of the entire experience was being able to put everything away last Wednesday after school.  There was no way I wanted to have to do it on Holy Thursday, so Wednesday was it.  Can't tell you how many things I washed out and put away, but I made the effort so next year I won't have to figure out where everything is and clean it.  Future me does not need to be burdened by current me!  

One of my philosophies of life involves not making work for others, including myself. I'm doing a better job of sticking to it these days.

still here

 Wow, that was a quick 6 weeks.  What happened?

I worked like crazy to finish all my grading before Christmas break began, and I was a very good girl and worked hard on my planning in the first few days off.  So when the offspring arrived I had plenty of free time, which was lovely.  DD came down from Flagstaff with her cat and stayed for the better part of a week, and DS2 flew in from Missouri on December 22.  His arrival was my best Christmas present this year.  

It's not like we spent a lot of time together, but we did have some Christmas shopping expeditions and one truly fine outing to see the Sistine Chapel exhibit at the Croft in downtown Phoenix.  It was exquisite.  These are the Sybils -- each prophetess at a different stage of life, all beautifully rendered. 

One thing I loved was being able to walk right up to the panels reproducing each work.  If you go to the Chapel in real life, you have to crane your neck to see everything -- not that I've been.  Yet!

It was just really lovely having everyone home again.  We had lots of great meals together and accompanying conversations.  I was able to take my second annual Happy New Year photo, too: 

Over New Year's I read Brandon Sanderson's latest epic The Rhythm of War, all 1200-odd pages, and loved it.  I only regret not having read it in time to talk to DS2 about it, but we'll have time for that eventually.  

I had my semi-annual thyroid cancer check up at the end of December, and just before going back to school got all my results: ultrasound looks good, but my TSH had ticked up all the way to 1, which is shockingly high for me -- the highest I've been off Thryogen in ages.  So my endo upped my meds a bit, and we'll see how it goes.  That was weird, I admit.  I also didn't like how high my fasting blood sugar was, but honestly, we were still working our way through all the holiday treats.  My students and their families are incredibly generous, and this year truly surprised me, given how generally bad things have been for everyone.  

Tomorrow marks the end of our second week back from break, and we're just stuck in this groove and not getting out any time soon.  It's wearying, having to teach the way we are now, but I'm doing my best to preserve the experience for my students.  It's going to get very weird as we move further into chemistry and we get to the hands-on stuff... It will be a lot of extra work (It's always extra work, this year it will just be more extra work)  but I'm thinking I can manage it.  Here's hoping. 

The house seems extra quiet now, even though it wasn't much noisier when the kids (not kids anymore!) were here.  Well, having another cat made things a little more lively, as he was likely to attack the Christmas tree on occasion.  But now the house just seems simultaneously too big and too full of stuff no one is using.  I have a strong urge to clean out cupboards and book cases and offload all the stuff that's just sitting there that no one will ever use or want.  It's such a satisfying feeling, but I don't really have time for it now.  But if we're going to renovate? That's the perfect time for that kind of a purge!  I hope we can. 

I managed to do some things I'd been putting off: some tailoring (every shirt I buy from Loft needs to be taken in, they're styled for people built like bricks...) and re-making (my birthday skirt from Anthropologie was too short, so I bought another one on clearance and frankensteined them together.  Looks fine!)   I'm thinking about starting a knitting project... or an embroidery project even, since I finally took the task light I bought months ago out of its box and set it up.  (It's what made reading those 1200+ pages possible without massive eye strain.)  So far I've just looked at a million patterns and not decided on anything yet.  Ha!

I do seem to be freezing all the time, though, these days.  My favorite place is on the couch under the blue blanket.  But really being honest, I'm cold, then I put the blanket on, then I warm up and take it off, and that cycle repeats endlessly.  Sometimes I just put the blanket on and like an infant, when I am warm and still for a moment, I drop off to sleep.  It helps. 

I survived the holiday sweets blitz with only a few pounds gained and I'm already back to where I was when they started.  I'm also back to doing my (almost) daily exercises and they have been tremendously helpful with my hip but my left shoulder is just not happy with me.  Of course it is not the shoulder itself but the muscles around it, and the problem is almost certainly a posture issue plus I haven't been doing my neck stretches.  The surgery was 15 bleeping years ago and my body will not let me forget it.  I'm hoping another week of diligent attention to both posture and stretching will get me out of this flare.  At least the hip is under control at the moment. I'm also keeping up with my face yoga/massage, trying to counteract the effects of gravity, extra pounds, and aging... having to see myself on Zoom screens all day long has unfortunately piqued my vanity.  I took a selfie I actually like:

The world is still a mess and I am mostly on a news fast except for headlines. Considering the circumstances that seems to be the best decision, since there is literally nothing I can do about any of the nonsense currently underway. Somedays I catch myself worrying about it but I know that's pointless.  It seems with all the white hair I'm now growing I'm finally gaining some wisdom? Perhaps!

 I'll just keep doing what I'm doing.

all grasping at something

 DD came down from Flagstaff for the weekend specifically to put up our Christmas tree and decorate the house.  I told her bluntly when she was here for Thanksgiving that I need help, and so she came down.  There's a sweetness to it that is tinged with worry for her, she's fretting about what to do after graduation this spring.  DH is pushing her towards grad school but she is thoroughly burned out on academia and doesn't want to go.  Given the circumstances, I don't blame her. 

The world is such a mess.

My partner teacher discovered a new (to us) and pernicious form of cheating this week, and investigating that ate up hours of precious time.  Now my team is trying to prevent administration from imposing a consequence on the student that is more of a punishment to us teachers. Nothing to do but wait to see how it plays out. I'm bracing myself for more unreasonable demands on my time.

This week I wracked my brain to figure out whether my 8th graders could do their thermal energy engineering challenge (build an insulating device) and I had to admit defeat.  The students can't share materials, can't work in groups, and can't go to the science lab.  For their static electricity and magnet labs, I was able to make little packets so everyone had their own materials.  For this challenge, there's just too much stuff to do that -- and I have no way of testing >25 devices in a single class period! I thought about putting them into the (always nearly empty now) refrigerator in the staff lounge overnight, but there wouldn't be room.  

The grading situation is so dire I literally can't assign my students anything else that's going to require lots of time to grade until I get clear.  That may happen this weekend since DD came down -- I was able to finish my religion and 95% of 7th grade for this week (the lessons are done, just need to be scheduled in Google Classrooms.)  That leaves 8th grade and writing a new test which will auto-grade instead of having the students design, build, and test devices, and then write it all up.  With focus, I can finish it all before heading to Mass tomorrow afternoon, which leaves Saturday evening and all Sunday for tackling my grades.

At least I hope that all happens.  I end up getting so burned out I have to just stop and do nothing for a while to recover.  Sometimes my diversion is writing a letter to DS2 at boot camp.  I believe this week started the more difficult parts of the training, including the 5-mile full-gear hike and perhaps the gas chamber.  

Whenever I think of him, I get a fluttery feeling of worry that I have to tamp down.  I remind myself to think, he's with good people, because my instinct is to think, he's safe.  Oh, he's moderately safe where he is, but he's really not safe.  He's learning how to be a soldier, and that's a life of inherent risk, and his MOS is insanely dangerous.  So I have to get out of the habit of thinking of him as safe and move on to thinking about him as still alive, and more importantly, happy. because every time I hear from him he just sounds terrific: enlisting was the best decision he ever made.  

This was such an odd week of ups and downs.  I had a fantastic philosophical discussion with my class one day this week on the nature of time, and a great class today with one of the 8th grade sections.  Unfortunately all the good vibes were squished by discussing how to deal with the cheater. I'm beginning to feel a bit manic. I have moments of feeling so light and hopeful but they don't last, and anxiety just crashes over everything.  

I know I'm over-tired. I'm up now because I fell asleep working/reading.  It was probably only 20 or 30 minutes but it was enough of a recharge that I'm still up now, but I'm going to bed asap and I'm not setting an alarm, for once!