Welcome

For thirty-eight and a half years I was a high school language arts teacher; I retired in June of 2013.  I hadn’t set a specific date of departure.  Like a lot of people, I wanted some formula for the right moment.  One of my friends who had retired a decade earlier said “you’ll know when it’s time.”  That seemed a little too mystical to me.  I had planned to go at least one more year, but when I spent a night in the hospital with chest tightness and shortness of breath that, fortunately, turned out to  be primarily stress, I knew it was time.

The first year of retirement was almost recuperative: making up for lost sleep, getting more exercise, taking more time to plan meals and cook.  It’s the little clues that let you know you’ve de-stressed.  You’re not cleaning as much hair out of the drain after you shampoo.  You’re not wearing a mouth guard to bed because you’re grinding your teeth.  You’re not buying giant sizes of Excederin and Advil.   Don’t get me wrong.  I loved every year that I taught, but I just no longer had the energy to do the job the way it needed to be done.

By year two, I was going to water aerobics three days a week and playing trivia one night a week.  My body was still on teacher time, waking up by 6:00 a.m. without an alarm clock.  I was getting long overdue repairs done on the house because I didn’t have to take a day off from work to let a repairman in.  I found out that there was a special sweetness about going out to lunch and a movie in the middle of the afternoon—probably because it still felt like I was playing hooky.  I had time to read for pleasure.  While I was working, I hesitated to start a book because I always had to set it aside to grade a couple sets of essays.  Sometimes, by the time I got back to it, regaining interest was a lost cause.  It was like a well-deserved vacation.  But by year three, I was getting hungry to get back in a routine, to do something more.  I could probably have worked almost every day if I had decided to substitute, but I was done with the classroom.  Retirement was supposed to be the time when you went back and resurrected your dreams from decades earlier, right?

Scratch the surface of almost any English teacher and you’ll find a frustrated writer.  You can only rhapsodize about the prose that you teach in your classes for so long and critique so many student essays before you begin to fantasize about your own authorship.  So, like so many people on the internet, I figured the easiest way to get back into a schedule of writing was to start a blog.  Ah, but what to blog about.

First off, I don’t consider myself an expert on anything.  Of course, a lot of blogs about finance, diet, and lifestyle clearly aren’t written by experts.  Most of the advice you get is flat out common sense, and if you had enough gumption and will power to be doing the things you already know you should do, you wouldn’t be broke, fat, and miserable, would you?

I’m not going to give you a mommy blog.  No kids here—or spouse.  I’m not going to tell you how to get rich.  I may share that if I ever figure it out myself, but don’t hold your breath.  I’m not going to give you recipes for scrumptious meals in ten minutes.  I’m more of a survival cook.  No itch to cook from scratch here.  I’m not going to show you Pintrest worthy pictures of my spectacular home projects or fashion looks I’ve put together.  I’m comfortable with my lifestyle, but, trust me, it’s nothing to aspire to.

I’m simply going to share observations from the viewpoint of the last archetype that, in this era of political correctness, it’s ok to make fun of—a spinster with cats.  If you don’t mind the cat hair or an occasional furball, come along for the ride—and welcome to my blog.