My bosses at work think I’m leadership material. Seems obvious to me. 😏
I spent the past few days at an intensive library leadership workshop held at a retreat center. It was a beautiful place with quaint accommodations. They fed us three squares a day and filled our brains with information.
Now we wait to see if I get a leadership job. Actually, as they clarified, we are all leaders, so now we wait to see if I get a management job. :)
I have an awesome book group that I started two years ago, fully inspired and based on Rosy’s book club. (I’ll give her credit every time!) We have eight members now and really enjoy each other’s company. Also inspired by Rosy’s club, we decided to take a vacation together. I booked an ocean front house for the weekend. Seven of us spent the weekend reading, talking, laughing (so, so much laughing!), singing, and relaxing. It was great. We carpooled there and back in two minivans, which gave us even extra time to chat and laugh, and a chance to stop for donuts on the way home!
We are already planning next year’s trip(s)!
This is a little old, and also boring, but I want to document anyway. After several years (4ish, I believe) and several steroid injections (three, maybe?) I went back in for another subglottic stenosis procedure on November 5th. Election day! It was a good day to be sedated.
I went back to my DHMC doctor, instead of going to Boston again. My local guy is doing the injection procedure now, so I was ready to switch back.
The process went well and I’m feeling better after it. He also did a steroid injection at the same time. Hopefully it lasts awhile!
Can you tell the needle spots from the freckles? :)
I saw a meme that said something like:
June is like a Friday, full of excitement for the summer/weekend;
July is like a Saturday, lots of fun, trying to do all the things to make the most of your summer/weekend;
and August is list a Sunday, dread sets in, never long enough, torn between relaxing and stressing
(This would be better if I could actually find the meme, but instead you’ll just have to use your imagination.)
I knew, last year, when I took this new job, that this summer would be tough. I knew that having minimal vacation would be a bummer. So really, feel free to skip this whole sad sack post, but I’m writing it anyway.
I didn’t miss (too much) the end of school year chaos and fun, and I DEFINITELY won’t miss the August stress, but the June summer is not the same when you have to work all year. My coworkers all have lots of saved up vacation time (how?!) and have been taking weeks off here and there. My bosses take LOTS of weeks off. Me and my miniscule vacation time are spending a lot of time at work these days. Well, the usual amount of time, but it feels like a lot when everyone else is on vacation! I know this is a weird post to follow my DC vacation post, but that was one day off, plus two weekend days (which were great!) and therefore no downtime at all at home. Working every 3rd Saturday also means less time at home. In theory you’re supposed to have a weekday off if you work a weekend, but in practice it ends up being shorter week days and no break. Sigh. It’s already the end of July and I haven’t even done any summer things. No Maine trips, no beaches, no water, no house projects, minimal sleeping late. Sigh.
Ok, enough of that. I’m going to turn off the computer and go outside. 🤗
I am now the proud founder of two successful book clubs! Both inspired and supported by cool people around me.
My personal book club met last night. I leave these “meetings” in such high spirits. So much laughter and fun. We now have seven members and I love all of them.
Tonight was the first night of my work-related sci-fi book club. I was worried no one would come and, simultaneously, worried too many people would come! I ended up with five people in the room and one on Zoom. (Many of our programs at the library are hybrid like that.) Everyone was excited and engaged. Everyone has great things to say about the book, and everyone took a book for next month’s meeting. Yay!
I’m feeling pretty good tonight, and wondering why it’s not Friday night. 😄
I celebrated 47 wonderful trips around the sun yesterday. We had a busy weekend, mostly involving driving and waiting at the car place for tire changes. Nothing exciting, but also somehow still fun. Friday I drove down to WPI to pick up Lex, brought him home, picked up Eve, then we went to the high school’s production of Curtains: The Musical. It was fantastic and hysterical. Lex was happy to be there and all his theater friends were happy to see him again. We brought two cars so I could go home while the kids socialized, but in the end they went home before me because I was socializing! LOL.
Saturday morning I took the kid car to the tire place and waited for four hours (FOUR HOURS!) in a freezing cold tire place for them to put snow tires on the car. Clearly I waited too late in the season to do this, but in my defence I did start calling around in early October and everyone was booked through December, so…. anyway. Towards the end of my long wait, Lex and Eve showed up with a mug of hot tea for me, and plans to run some top-secret errands (that Lex repeatedly reassured me were not bad errands).
Saturday afternoon they surprised me with beautiful flowers, presents, and a table display. 🤗 I opened presents Saturday afternoon while Lex was still home. Then Eve and I drove him back to WPI. Eve hadn’t had the chance to see his dorm room yet, and also she love car trips with me. We left around 4:30pm, when it was almost dark, so it felt like a super long drive in the dark, but really it was fine and we were home by 11pm.
Sunday, my actual birthday, Eve made waffles for breakfast and angel food cake for dinner. I went to an adorable wine bar / cafe in town with a fellow librarian I haven’t seen in many months. It was super nice to catch up with her. When I got home Eve had cake ready and we watched a Great British Bake Off together, then I joined a Discord video chat with my college buddies.
Overall, it was a great birthday weekend! I’m happy to be 47 and starting another trip around the sun. 🌞
Rosy and two of her friends are in town this weekend. They signed up for a baking class at King Arthur Flour, and invited me too. :) We spent the day today (9am-5pm!) at the baking center, learning to make fabulous cakes. Some of us have had a little cake experience in the past, others there never made cakes before. We all had fun and came away with two delicious cakes each.
I invited my book club friends over to help us eat the cakes. Rosy and her friends put together a yummy charcuterie, and pot of tomato soup with KAF bread for dinner. It’s pretty awesome to have people show up and host a party at your house. :) I had a table full of people enjoying a good meal and tasty dessert. Happiness is.
We had a busy week. Lex was home between A Term and B Term. He successfully finished his first quarter of college! He ended it with two A’s and a B. The B was in Calc III, a class that the FB Parents groups says is the most “NRed” class at WPI. “NR” means “not recorded” and is an option if your grade is too low and you don’t want it to count. I’m not sure if the credit counts or not, but Lex was pretty pleased with his B in that class.
He came home last Friday night and, at the urging of high school pep band friends, he went to the homecoming football game and played with the pep band. River went to pep band that night too and they all had a great time!
On Sunday we had our usual family chat with Eve, but this time all of us were in one place, sharing one screen, EXCEPT Eve who was on the other side of the ocean. It quickly devolved into tears. I’m not sure if it’s because we were together or not, but she was pretty miserable. She’s had a cold for awhile and medicine is weirdly limited there. They don’t have the standard go-tos, like DayQuil and Sudafed. She said even Tylenol requires a prescription. So weird. Her host family tells her she needs to eat more healthy (true) and bought her some decongestant that takes 6-12hrs to kick in. Weird. As I’m typing this I realize I should research why Sweden is so anti-OTC meds. I don’t remember that from almost 30 years ago! Super weird!! 😮 So she cried through that whole conversations. Everything is awful, everyone is terrible, she hates it all, and misses everything at home. Sigh.
Lex came to visit me at the library on Monday. I gave him a tour of the library that he hasn’t seen since he was four years old. No surprise, he didn’t remember the place! :) I got to show him off to my co-workers, then we got pizza at the pizza place next door and enjoyed each other’s company.
The week went on. My job is so low-key that I am quite often bored with *nothing* to do. I have cleared up both of my email inboxes. I went from 2K+ in my personal account and 8k+ in my school account (still active because I’m still doing the website work) down to 15 and 2 respectively. I didn’t read all the emails (of course!) but I scanned the subject lines and initial text as I deleted them. When I got to the March 2020 emails in my school account I noticed my heart rate increased and my breathing got shallower and faster. I literally had to close my email and step away from my computer for awhile. I didn’t come go back to the email until the next day. It was such a strange experience as all the memories from the school closure came flooding back.
On Thursday the boys had some friends over. Simon, Jonah, and Liv. They hung out, watched YouTube, laughed, ate, etc. All the things teens do and they were all happy to have Lex back for a few days. Part way through the evening I got a text from Eve saying it was hard to be away when all of her friends are hanging out at her house. True, of course, but I was surprised she knew. She said they were posting quotes and picture on Discord. I had to politely ask my house full of teens to stop posting on Discord for the evening. Eve and I continued to have a long, downer conversation via text, while I simultaneously texted with Joyce about her exchange student experience. Eve hasn’t directly asked to come home, but she was hinting at it pretty strongly. Sigh.
Eve texted me later that night and said her bestie, Simon, had sent her a bunch of love via text and memes. 💗
Follow-up conversations with family and friends have shown me that Eve is pretty positive when texting with everyone else. She’s saving the tears for me. Good, I guess.
Last night we (me and the boys) joined Rosy and two of friends at a local pub for dinner. The service was slow and the music was loud (but good!), and we all had fun.
We had another family chat today (since I’ll be busy tomorrow) and it was once again all of us here and Eve there. I tried having us all join from our own devices around the house, but apparently my broadband can’t support three independent video conference streams very well, so the conversation was choppy. We ended up consolidating on the couch with my computer. Eve said she isn’t bothered by our being together, but she definitely got more emotional after we gathered on one computer. We had a good chat though and I managed to end it on a high note with everyone happy and smiling. :)
Lex decided to go back to WPI today instead of tomorrow so that he has a day to settle in. So weird that WPI is now “home” and he needs that day to settle in there instead of here. It makes sense, but still weird. He packed this morning, after our chat with Eve, and we once again played the “waiting for the dryer” game. A perennial favorite (ha!) in this house. By the time the laundry *finally* got done, Lex was overcome with a wave of emotion. He was tired today and doesn’t generally do well with transition, but when it was time to get in the car he started crying and worrying and all the emotion came out. Way more then when we dropped him off in August! He said he was too tired, he didn’t want to back to dining hall food, packing was too hard, etc. We talked about how hard it is for vacation to end and the stressors of getting back to the “real world.” It’s so surreal to me that the “real world” is no longer here with me. Alan picked him up last week and brought him back to WPI today. It gave them some good quality time. Alan texted me hours later saying he just dropped off a happy boy at college. Whew! I sat down on the couch to read and promptly fell asleep for an hour. I think I was emotionally drained.
Rosy and her friends are in town for a lovely New England weekend. Unfortunately the universe said NO, and it has been raining the entire time. They spent the day exploring in the rain, then went back to their Airbnb for the evening. I was going to join them, but when I woke up from my nap I could not motivate myself. We will be spending all day tomorrow at King Arthur Flour doing a cake baking/decorating class, and then my book group will come over tomorrow afternoon to meet Rosy’s friends and help us eat four cakes! This afternoon I spent a weird amount of time sitting at my table, unable to get up and go hang out with her and friends, thinking about my messy house, thinking about socializing, thinking about kids, etc. I was just stuck. So I did the lame thing and bailed on socializing. (Sorry, Rosy!) Then I hand washed some dishes, folded the laundry, and swept the floor (my roomba is broken and the floor was long overdue!). Then decided to write a blog post. :) Above the laptop screen right now I see my couches that need vacuuming tonight (stupid pets) and a pile of TLC goodies for Eve that I need to ship as soon as I can find a box for them. I think I’m going to vacuum the couches, watch some TV, and crash.
I’m excited for cake baking tomorrow, and spending time with Rosy, her friends, and my book group. Then settling back into my new life on Monday with just me and River in the house. Plus the always needy pets, of course! :)
The teacher in my is dying to ask: How many emotions did you see in that text? The title said “all” of the emotions; did you see “all” of the emotions there? What other emotions can you think of?
The sane person in me says: Tessa, get a hobby! LOL.
I started work at my new job this week. I’m the friendly new librarian at the Howe Library. I’ll spend a few hours twice a week staffing the reference desk (aka the information desk) and the rest of the time I’ll be selecting books for my categories and planning programming for the library. They assigned me to three genres: mystery, science fiction, and graphic novels. They asked if that was ok and I said yes, heck yes! I’ll also be helping with social media, because I just can’t help myself. :)
I can only work 35hrs a week, so today I was scheduled to close (at 5:00pm) so they reminded me yesterday to come in later this morning so I didn’t go over the 35hrs. Umm.. ok. I texted my friend last night and we met up for breakfast in town this morning. It was very lovely. The folks at the library even take hour long breaks! It has been a running joke this week at my reaction when I heard that and my question, “What do you even DO for an hour?!?” They were equally shocked to hear what a teacher lunch break looks like.
I’m starting a new job next week. Adult Services Librarian at the Howe Library. I had a little tour last week and they introduced me to someone who does the shelving and other people who do the ordering and processing. Someone else does the checkout. By the end of the tour I found myself asking “What exactly will I be doing?” They were surprised to hear that I did all of that and more, and that was only one third of my job at school! Apparently I will be in charge of collection development and programming, along with several other librarians in my department. It will either be a calm, peaceful job or totally boring. We’ll see.
However, this week all of my colleagues in education are starting back at school and I am feeling a tiny bit of survivors guilt. As many of you know. for the past bunch of years this has been a very stressful week for me as I prepared to return to school. The school library role these days is almost three full-time jobs: librarian, teacher, and technical support. In-service week always found me trying to get the library ready, the computers ready, all the various tech related accounts ready, lesson plans done, bulletin board up, and all the school-wide commitments as well.
This year, this week I’ve been updating district websites (another thing I always do this week), doing house chores, and relaxing a bit too. It is such an amazingly different feeling than previous years. This new job might be amazing or a snooze-fest, but right now I am entirely happy with my decision and at peace this week.