Well, it’s great to be back home, and getting back to normal – whatever that is! Summer is over, and for most of my life that’s meant time for school to start… for my parents who were teachers, for myself as a student and then as a teacher, for my kids, or for all of the above. But this September seems to have left me feeling a bit lost!
I resigned my most recent teaching position in June. My youngest child graduated from high school in June. For the first time since 1986, I have not had to buy school supplies. Just think, 21 straight years of buying school supplies – or home school supplies, as the case sometimes was. And no lesson planning to do… Well, at least I’m getting a bit of the edge taken off this empty nest syndrome by participating in a home school email list…
I haven’t done any formal job-searching or settled into any big projects yet, because I have been awaiting for the arrival of my two newest grandchildren. Of course, Will arrived a couple weeks ago… and the other baby is due in a few weeks from now… and since both families are 8 to 10 hour trips away – in opposite directions – I haven’t wanted to get into anything that would keep me from going for a good visit. But this baby business can be quite a waiting game; due dates are “not necessarily so” situations!
So meantime (all summer and still…) I have been keeping busy, but at the same time avoiding committing to anything that would interfere with the arrival of my grandkids. At the beginning of summer, I wrote down a long “to-do” list of things I’ve been procrastinating about for a long time… and yesterday went through it to see what I’ve accomplished. I was pleased to see that I’ve made some good inroads into some of my projects – but the still-to-do list is longer yet! I did lots of French language (and even some Haitian Creole) study and practice, worked on my photo albums, updated my web site a bit, have been going through my old journals (I have close to a hundred) which has been a really interesting experience (I’ll be posting up some of the more interesting items on my website, and possibly here on my blog), writing some new stories, doing daily exercises (wow! I now have abs, which I thought had disappeared forever during the child-bearing years!), doing a bit of sketching, picking lots of berries, gardening (anyone out there want some of my mega-crop of cherry tomatoes? lol), Bible study, and of course getting this blog going… and most recently, a two-week trip to visit my newly arrived grandson!
So, I should be all up-to-date, right? Ha! I have re-written my to-do list… which is now whittled down to 50-plus items under three categories: projects, on-going, and need-to-do’s. The trouble is – where to start? I suppose the need-to-do’s should take priority (for example, getting passports, which has been on my need-to-do list for about 2 years… however, I am happy to report that I did manage to trim that particular list quite a lot this summer, hurrah!). The on-going things are on-going; things that I have more or less developed into habits, though I have been slacking on the exercises, oh dear. But it’s the “projects” list that really draws me: sketching old cabins, writing about home school and life-long learning, finishing up our family trees, continuing to write stories on the OurStory site, doing something about those stamp collections, quilting, crocheting, handmade Christmas gifts, learning to use our new digital SLR camera and our cell phone, more work on those photo albums (especially the ones of family photos from 100 years ago… who are all those folks?), guitar practice, and really, really doing some major work on my website and blog and Flickr. Oh yes, then there’s the book people keep telling me to write… and a dozen or two other things I’d love to get into…
I totally cannot understand how anyone can be bored in a world where there are so many interesting things to do! My problem is choosing. Do I choose something that I just love to do? Or should I be practical and do something that will earn some cash (I did create business cards that offer “Tutoring – Writing – Home School Consulting” services… but haven’t been handing them out because I’m still waiting on that second baby… or maybe I should just find a 9 to 5 job… one that I don’t have to take home with me… teaching has so much “take home” work to it, and so do “home based businesses” in general… maybe I should apply at the corner Starbucks, eh… something simple…).
Sometimes, I wish for a really organized life. I don’t know how many times I have created detailed, color-coded, I-am-going-to-stick-with-this schedules – but they never seem to last for more than about 24 hours before something pops up to totally mess them around! Of course, one can expect that when there are five children around, but I always kind of thought that when my life got less complicated (like now, with only 1 child still home, and him pretty much independent)… well, it would be less complicated! Ha! But maybe this is “normal” life… full of unexpected twists and turns… and frankly, I really do love adventure and not being sure what will be around the next bend… despite the inordinate amount of time I’ve wasted in my life “planning the future” as if I really have any control over it!
So maybe, despite not having any “school” this year, despite being in a “waiting” pattern for those babies, despite not knowing what’s coming down the road, and even what to expect tomorrow (or in the hour or two that is left of today), I really am “back to normal” – whatever that is!
