Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

The time has arrived to return to work. As always, the summer seemed to slip by so quickly. And as always, I'm not ready for the lazy days to end. I've reached the point in my life where I'm thinking a lot about retirement. After 35 years in the classroom, it's definitely time to turn off the lights and close the door. My heart simply isn't into going through the motions of prepping, teaching, grading repeat. My heart is all about being home with the boys and moving slowly through our days. Our summer was absolutely lovely, and I want this kind of life all the time now, not just for three months of the year. The main issue keeping me from retiring now is health insurance. If I knew I had really good insurance that wasn't going to cost a fortune, I'd retire right now. But that won't be the case, so I'm going to keep working at least two more years to hang onto the insurance I currently have. The upside is I do teach at a wonderful place. I have awesom...

Tuesday the temps reached 90. Around 5 pm, I realized I am so over the heat of summer. I'm ready for cooler temps and then the cold that will follow. For one reason. Mosquitoes. They've been just awful all summer long. The boys and I can't step outside the back door without an immediate frontal, side, and rear attack. I'm not exaggerating. It doesn't matter what time of day we try to get out. The mosquitoes are waiting and ready to assault us. I've doused myself in more bug spray the last three months than I have my entire life. The poor doggoes end up with mosquitoes on top of mosquitoes vying for space on their snouts. Taking a walk is miserable for them and me. For whatever reason, the mosquito problem seems to be relegated to my side of the village. As soon as we get three blocks away, to the east side of the village, the mosquitoes lessen. And two blocks further they all but disappear. There is a creek about a hundred and fifty yards behind the house, which...

At least for now. Who knows what will happen a month down the road given the increase of variant cases. I'm hoping for the best but am prepared to end up completely online again. As of now, I'll return to campus on Monday. And my big summer project is 99.99% done. All that's left is touching up spots here and there. I finished up the basement windows and downspouts today, along with doing what I could with the doors to the basement stairs. They're not exterior doors, and they're warping because they take a lot of the weather since they're west-facing, but I'm going to leave them until next summer. Then I'll replace them with proper exterior doors. The house last fall. The house newly painted this summer. While I'm excited to have finished painting the house, I now have another issue to address: the septic. I was touching up the attic window and heard a motor shut off. I thought it was my neighbor's air conditioner and didn't think too much ab...

It's official: I'm over the gray, cool, rainy weather we've been having for the past three weeks. I don't live in the Pacific Northwest because I just don't like and/or enjoy day after day of gray, gloomy weather. Every now and then is fine, but for Pete's sake, enough already. Mother Nature, please be kind and give us some heat and sunshine!  Okay, weather rant over. Thankfully I was able to get most of the house painting finished before being sidelined by the weather. All that's left are the corbels, some of the front porch, and the basement windows. Not a lot at all, but it's quite frustrating to not be able to work and complete the job. What is finished is absolutely beautiful! Seriously beautiful. I had this vision in my mind about how the green, brown, and pale yellow would work together, and the reality is even better than what I imagined. Every time I walk the dogs and approach the house as we return, I'm struck by how the house seems so much...

I have imposed limits on my news consumption. I simply cannot read anymore without becoming emotional. I know we'll get through this, but the thoughts that so many people could be/most likely will be ill and there are those who are so vulnerable make me incredibly sad.  So, to distract myself (since I am now working from home until further notice, and the only way I can really do any work from home is to amuse myself with "fun" breaks in between grading papers), I made a mask. No, not the kind of mask that helps prevent the spreading of germs. Seriously, what would be the fun in that? That would just add to my sadness. I'm trying to alleviate said sadness, so a fun mask seemed the way to go. After much thought, I imposed a couple of rules. Rule 1: The mask had to be made mostly from trash. Rule 2. One rule was enough. So I found an egg carton I'd put into the recycling bin. I cut off the lid and trimmed the sides. Having no idea how to go about ma...

The "have-to-go-to" meetings are out of the way. Really, they weren't so bad. I don't mind sitting through a meeting these days. Not too long ago, I would have been singing a different tune. I remember a retreat my dean required all of us to go to, and I wasn't happy at all about having to go. It was a Friday, a day I used to mark on the calendar for grading since we have no classes on Fridays, and the retreat was scheduled at a time during the semester when I had a ton of papers to read/respond to. Yeah, I was in a foul mood when I arrived at the retreat. The person brought in to run the retreat said hello when I walked in and told me to take a name badge. She then said I didn't have to put my name on it. Instead, I could put how I was feeling. So I put "Annoyed." When my dean saw this, she gave me a look of half amusement half disappointment. My foul mood didn't improve as the morning wore on. If anything, I became even more resentful for hav...

The beautiful layer of snow we were graced with yesterday melted off today. I did take a long walk during late afternoon yesterday to enjoy the snow covering the trees and the trail, so I didn't miss out on seeing its beauty. I had the trail to myself. Not another soul was out the entire time I walked. Today, Ado and I took another long walk earlier this afternoon, after the snow was gone, to enjoy the heat of the sun. This time, we weren't alone. Lots of others decided to take advantage of the lovely afternoon warmth. After my walk yesterday, I sat here and bought my ticket to see Hamilton ! And I have my train tickets to get to Chicago then home. Now all I need is a hotel for the night. I simply cannot wait to go. Last year at this time, I couldn't find a ticket for less than $300, and that was for a seat in the very back of the balcony, the view blocked. I do have a balcony ticket, but the view should be fine, and while I had budgeted $200 for my ticket, I was able to ...

Back to work today. To be honest, I was totally ready to get back to the routine of designing the curriculum, teaching, figuring out how to get the writing center moving forward, and seeing all my friends. I've missed all of them very much. I saw them a couple of times during my leave, and we texted at times, but not seeing them on a daily basis created a hole in my life. They're wonderful people I am so glad are my friends. I did run into a problem first thing. I turned on my computer and began working on a document only to have Word crash on me every single time I opened the document. I tried other documents. I tried creating new documents, but each time, Word closed out on me after about five seconds of being up on the monitor. This is really weird to me since my computer was off the entire time I was gone. What could possibly have happened to the program while the computer was off for seven months? Thankfully, I can work from home tomorrow, doing all my Word doc work from...

Today was the first day I've been able to really sit at my desk and write. And research. And upload the photos from my camera. And transfer the video clips from my GoPro. And even submit two poems to a literary magazine. Being this productive feels really good. To start my day, I made lemon blueberry scones with lemon glaze. While I'm mostly a gluten and grain-free eater, I do like scones. Scratch that. I LOVE scones. Those I will allow myself to eat. Being able to move around a kitchen and bake or cook has been one of the delightful things about being home. Eating refried beans smeared on a tortilla, topped with goat cheese and salsa verde, got pretty old after a month of it. Presently, I'm waiting for the pizza dough I made just a bit ago to rise. While I won't eat the crust, I thought it'd be fun to make homemade pizza for dinner. I've not done that in a very long time. As I wait, I decided to look through the nearly 2000 photos from my camera. These incl...

This weekend was supposed to be grade papers weekend. I was going to get started early yesterday as I have quite a few papers that need attention. So what have I been doing? Avoiding anything related to work by brewing up another batch of kombucha (the first batch was okay--a little too vinegary for me--so I'm hoping this batch works out better). making yogurt (love knowing the only ingredients are whole milk from grass-fed cows and cultures). simmering beef bone broth on the stove (and burning the palm of my hand by grabbing hold of the cast iron skillet used to brown the bones in the oven before transferring them to the stock pot. My little, "I'm so stupid! I'm so stupid!" dance around the kitchen as I'm holding my hand brought Hubby running and turning on the cold water at the sink for me). making homemade granola (which smells so good as it is heating in the oven). sweeping and mopping and dusting and laundry and dishes (yes, even cleaning ho...