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Inspired by Dr. Crazy, here’s a year-in-review post in honor of my upcoming birthday.
Since August 17th, 2010, I have:
- moved into my own classroom, which has been really great; I love being able to make my own nest on campus.
- taught a new class in the fall, a literature elective called “Generations”.
- taught (and survived) my largest student/course load since starting at Single Sex School.
- written and submitted the first personal essays I’ve written in years, all on topics other than motherhood (and so far, all rejected)
- started an email-writing-swap with an old college friend, passing essays and poems, revisions and suggestions back and forth (and which I have let languish this summer and fully intend to revive)
- traveled to Bath County, Virginia with Thanksgiving with my in-laws, went to Alabama for my grandmother’s funeral and upstate New York to watch my kids run around with my cousins’ kids and dazzle them all with Niagara Falls
- gone overnight camping with 16 Brownies, helped sell hundreds of cookies and plan lots of crafts, and watched half of those Brownies bridge into our new Junior Scouts!
- decided to start highlighting/coloring my hair, as the accelerating presence of gray in my hair has really been wigging me out lately (no pun intended).
- gone to Winter Park, Florida for a week as an NEH scholar, studying the work of Zora Neale Hurston
- bought a new-to-us car, a kitchen sink faucet, a bathroom sink, a new window AC unit, curtains, new bedroom furniture for Lucy, and a metric ton of groceries, clothes, and nonessential items
- had my first kidney infection and first allergy-induced full-body hives
- had a poem accepted during National Poetry Month at Alimentum
- said yes to Sophie’s request for her own hamsters and no, many times, to her requests for yet another cat
- joined Twitter, started and then abandoned a book blog
- started keeping a gratitude journal, which has become a treasured part of my bedtime routine
- read lots of books, watched lots of movies and hours of TV, listened to some really great music, hosted some good parties for kids and adults alike
Sounds like a fabulous year. Here’s to many, many more.
Thanks, dear friend!
Congratulations on all of the good stuff (although not so much on the hives and other downers). There’s something about summer birthdays that leads to such reflection on the past year, at least for those of us on academic calendars; I had similar sorts of thoughts last month. Do you get to celebrate your birthday before school meetings get started?
Yes, my birthday falls in the last free week I have, which is perfect timing! I’m thinking of going to the salon that day, to start my new year with my new hair, but am not sure yet. It’s funny–when I was younger, I hated having my birthday in the summer because I never got to have a “school” birthday party, but now I love having my birthday signal the close of my favorite season and the beginning of my real “new year”!
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