Ten Things post Tax Day Wednesday

Crapity crap, I’m going to have to brave the hordes at the post office today because despite all the best intentions to file WELL before today, we didn’t.

It’s beautiful and sunny and warming outside but I’m not fooled: I KNOW that it’ll snow at least once more before we’re done; the memory of the May that began with a foot or so of snow several years back looms large.

1. As I finish the second semester of my probably last semester at TCC, teaching my two favorite courses, Comp and Speech, I am recognizing that my nervous system is revved up far tighter than is good for the average human; I rarely sleep on Sunday nights before teaching and while I am calm and centered IN the classroom, out of the classroom is a different story. I think I haven’t properly reset my nervous system since the Bat Mitzvah. Working on it, though. Yoga is my answer, but I think I may have to practice it more than every 2 months.

2. I have recently got back in touch with my cooperative teacher over at the high school with whom I interned and was very surprised when she offered me a short-term, three-month sub position for when she’s on maternity leave early next school year. Truth be told, my internship was a minefield of dreadfully stressful and overwhelming experiences interspersed with a few growth-enhancing ones, where I was inexpertly guided, and which pretty much turned me off of every considering teaching at a high school. Yeah, THAT extreme. However, my last two years teaching at a community college have helped me evolve into at the very least in the DIRECTION of the teacher I want to be and I am seriously considering returning to the place or origin, as it were, to reset my high school teaching experience. Planning for only 50 minutes instead of two hours should be a BREEZE!

3. You know you are in for new glasses when a lens FALLS out of the frames. Today Mrs. Chili was kind enough to meet me at the local Lensmakers place to confirm that one of the pairs I had selected in a “maybe pile” was in fact a pretty fantastical choice. I’d had an optometrist check me out right before I chose my glasses and was gratified to know my eyes haven’t deteriorated in the five years since I last got glasses. The new ones I chose aren’t black or rectangular like the last pair (that I loved but had got sick of), but are instead slightly oval, and coppery. None were in stock, quel surprise, so I must wait two weeks until they do.

4. I had to see the optometrist before I picked out new glasses, so I didn’t end up potentially having the WRONG prescription. So, I endured the slit lamp and the machine that goes *POOF* blowing air into my eye, declined the dilation drops and then sat through an eye-exam with a nervous and earnest young optometrist. Imagine, if you will, the typical eye exam:someone peering into your eyes, reading off itty bitty script projected on the wall and joy of joys, and enduring the contraption optometric masochists somewhere devised in order to make the patient testing the potential new diopter combination look like an escapee from gawky clown school.

I was pleased to find my eyes hadn’t noticeably changed - I am STILL practically blind in one eye (have been since birth) and still have nearly perfect vision in the other, AND I still have just about NO depth perception without my glasses, due to the huge difference in the strength of my eyes. I’d forgotten that facet of my wacky eyesight and was actually shocked when I could not register a single correct answer on the depth perception test. Shh.

5. This Saturday marks the beginning of Passover and I will once again be hosting the Seder; this year, there will be 23 for dinner and although I wish I had WEEKS between the Bat Mitzvah I am not yet fully recovered from and the beginning of the ten days of matzoh, I am up for it; aside from being a cookathon, our Seder is really a conversation about personal freedom and choices, and I love the reminder that our lives are the sum total of everything we have created them to be.

6. As the grass starts to fill in around the house, DH and are closing in on a deal to purchase a real lawn tractor, one capable of taking on the 4 acres of lawn, shrub and forest path we maintain. We did have an entry-level John Deere, but that was crap on wheels and had consistent electrical problems until it morphed into an ugly yellow and green lawn ornament we eventually had Deere haul away. More debt, but at least we can finance the new machine for the next 5 years. No, it’s not one of THESE…

…it’s just one of these things

7. Next week is break week for my daughters, so I am packing up the Prius - gas is up at 3.19 around here today! - and heading up North to visit family and friends. One of those friends is someone who has undergone a significant transformation in the last few years; since I last saw my friend HE has become whom she was inside all along - SHE. My kids haven’t seen Val since the transformation and frankly, they are a little worried they’ll inadvertently react in away that will upset Val, or ask a dumb question, or just stare. Val has assured me that she’s used to ALL of that and that nothing my kids can say will offend. I, on the other hand, am quite clear that I will probably hug, stare, grin like a moron and hug some more: I don’t think I could possibly be more thrilled at her new life.

8. My trip to hometown Montreal will also feature some hanging out time between my daughter and the daughter of a good friend/ex-boyfriend. Had we all lived in the same city, these kids would have grown up together, but since we live 5 hours away from one another, they’ve seen each other rarely. Still, they’ve managed to bond and now Boo insists on going up there and being able to spend some significant time. I love it. This whole family made the trip from Montreal up here in New England for the Bat Mitzvah and we ended up spending only moments of real time together, but they were significant.

9. This isn’t Tuesday, so the TTT goddess won’t open the bowels of the earth and have it consume me if I stop…

10. ..here.

Are you enjoying the springing forth of life, all ye in this hemisphere?