Monthly Archives: August 2020

Books dominated my life as a teacher.  No matter how digital or high tech I got, it was a bunch of books that got me through my degrees and a bunch of books that helped me move through my days teaching.  Certainly play scripts are the last thing to go digital (sadly this may not last) and all plays come in paper – lots and lots of paper.  But now I stand here at retirement looking at over 12 cases of books.  Most of them are individual play scripts that I have collected over the years.  Every trip to NYC or to London added a few to the collection.  Read more →

The day I shifted into retirement and the job income came to a close, I thought, for the first time, that it was time to sit down and budget every penny that went through my hands.  I have always been rather good with money.  Having a dad that was a banker, I learned early to respect, but not fear money.  I was told repeatedly that money was simply going to be an energy that will flow through my life to my last days.  But, somehow the idea of no further, formal paycheck got me counting every penny I saw.  I went from budgeting to micro-budgeting.  I got up every morning and went through the checkbooks just to make sure that I had not made an error the previous day.How could today be lived on even LESS money?  Read more →

For almost forty years, my life has been marked out by bells, bells, bells – – bells ringing every 50 or 60 or 90 minutes.  Bells told me when to start the day.  Bells told me when I could sneak in a quick pee.  Bells told me when to eat and stop and certainly marked out the close of day.  Now I hear no bells.  11 becomes 12 becomes 2 becomes 5.  I thought I would miss the structure of the day – and I do – but I have worked to recreate a structure for me.  I just think a bell is no longer needed – although walking around with a kitchen timer going off all the time might catch some attention  A short glance at the watch or clock and I am good to go – or to stop.  But now I can pee on demand – and to each change in life there is a blessing.

Today was the first day for teachers to report for pre-planning.  I found this out by looking at my phone after waking shortly after 9:30am and experienced a solid moment of PANIC.  How could I have not set my alarm – what was I thinking? – how was I going to explain this.  But the panic subsided as I realized this was going to be my new norm.  Teachers were going to be scheduled and “memo-ed” and directed and I was going to be sitting on the sidelines watching it all go down.  It was an odd sensation of sadness as these “first” days were always my favorite – – but I woke up determined to find my new “first day”.  I am not exactly sure what that will look like.  I need to both treat and challenge myself.  Likely, though, it is not going to involve getting up anywhere near 6:30 in the morning.

This will be my very first year of approaching mid-August and not going back to school.  Although it is an unusual year of COVID craziness, it still comes with a huge pile of sentiment.  It really isn’t the kids I will miss so much – at least not initially – it will be all of the preparations for that first day.  I will miss that special trip to the mall for that one back-to-school outfit that I really don’t need but have always gotten since sixth grade.  I will miss the haircut timed perfectly for the week before school and all of my little lunch supplies.  The lunch box hasn’t been there for awhile , but I always liked buying the miniatures of things to be at the ready.  BUT most of all I will miss my Duckwall’s afternoon. 

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