Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

During the walk-through of the unit Angel Baby and I will be moving back into, I had no doubt whatsoever that I am making the right decision. I am connected to that space. I even told my landlord I plan to stay for years, which he is perfectly fine with. I'm happy. He's happy. The last few days, I've been working to bring the unit back to being happy, too. My first job was to clean the basement to rid it of the dog crap smell. I went ahead and did the vinegar wash followed by the Pinesol wash, thinking that would at least disinfect the floor. I burned some sage afterward, to cleanse the air. But I could still smell the dog crap. I walked around the basement, which isn't big by any means, and saw a couple pieces of cardboard leaning against the back wall. When I moved them aside, I found the culprit: a pile of dog doo that had been swept into the corner then covered by the cardboard. Once I removed all of it, the smell diminished significantly. Today, it seemed a...

Thursday, when I knew all of the folders/docs I'd had on my work computer were not going to be recovered, I told a colleague I was going to look at the situation as an opportunity to start with a clean slate. While I lost years of documents that pretty much told the story of my time at the college, do those documents really mean all that much? After all, I've already reached the top rung of the ladder regarding my teaching position -- I cannot go up. Thankfully, I cannot go down, either. I've reached a holding pattern. The clean slate just might be exactly what I need to move out of the holding pattern, move along the path that will be the next part of my life journey. As part of my clean slate state of mind, I went into work yesterday and set to work eliminating things that have been taking up space. I had two boxes of stuff -- trinkets students have given me over the years, pens, markers, paper clips, and a bunch of other little items I no longer need/use/want -- si...