May endings

This is really the month of endings, so it's no wonder I'm feeling a little down. It's also rainy today, which always lowers my mood. So funny that way -- when I was a kid, rainy days made me positively joyous. They were romantic and mysterious. I loved them. Now, although I try to bring back those feelings, they won't come. Instead I think, "The sky is gray, my life is gray, everything's going wrong." I promise you, tomorrow afternoon when the sun is scheduled to come out, I'll feel much better.

So, endings. The first ending was last Friday, the last day of classes for me. I wished the students the best of luck in their future lives and they clapped for me briefly. Then I "celebrated" by emptying out the office I've had for almost three years, removing every scrap of myself from the space and the computer. I left behind only some thumbtacks that I didn't want to carry home for fear of stabbing myself. I hung around until 2 pm, when my next-cubicle neighbor came back from her class, so I could say goodbye. But it was awkward. We made tentative plans for a farewell get-together with other lecturers, which meant that we didn't have to hug or say we'd keep in touch. I'm not sure whether that farewell get-together is actually going to happen, though. No one's posted anything about it. Maybe I was supposed to set it up. I still could.

Monday morning I awoke to an end-of-semester/year cold. Still, by Tuesday night I had finished my final bout of grading and posted the semester grades. So that is really the end of my time with that department. Oh, no, wait, it's not quite over. I still have to retrieve my student evaluations (in a month or two, whenever they show up) and RETURN MY KEYS. I deliberately did not turn in my keys on Friday. I don't even know where one of them is.

An unpleasant surprise ending appeared in this morning's newspaper: our wonderful school superintendent has been fired. Almost everyone really likes him, but the BVSD school board has some very conservative members who apparently wanted him OUT. Really disappointing that they succeeded. We've got to get rid of those board members.

Now we await the end of school for the boos, which will be two weeks from today. There are many intermediary events before the final day -- a final picnic, a final field trip, a final restaurant fundraiser, etc. This year's endings are particularly complicated because as soon as classes end, the old school building will be torn down! They've spent the entire year building the new school right next to the old one; then they'll remove the old one and make it into a parking lot, playground, and sports fields (the new school has already consumed one playground and much of the old field). I will definitely miss the old school, but Rocket Boy actually WENT to that school! He's really feeling sad.

Something that is not ending quite yet: my research assistant job, which I have consented to continue through June. This means we will have more income than usual this summer, and our health insurance won't be cancelled until July 1st.

Kid A's baseball season will end the day before school does. It's followed by a tournament, but unfortunately he's going to miss all but one day of that, because the boos and I are taking a wonderful one-week trip to California to visit my family. I'm bummed that it's overlapping with the baseball tournament, but there really was no other time to do the trip.

Speaking of baseball, the boos and I took in another Rockies game this past Sunday. It was Little League day, so Kid A wore his shirt and cap and marched in the "parade," which wound around and around the field for ages. In the photo above, he's the one in shorts facing the wrong direction (probably talking to someone).

We had to leave our house by 10 am to be on time for the parade, and Rocket Boy had to go to a political thing that morning, so this meant that Kid B had to come to the game too, and he HATES baseball. Still, even though he looks kind of glum in this photo, he told me he had a good time, and that is the first time he has ever said that about a baseball game. I think our seats had something to do with it: I accidentally bought seats in the wheelchair row. This meant that we sat on comfortable folding chairs that could be moved around, had no one in front or in back of us, had a great -- if distant -- view of the field, and did not have to climb any stairs. I bought Kid B a bag of cotton candy, water, nachos (too spicy for him), and the lemonade he's holding. Kid A sat with his team for the first part of the game and his coach bought him food; later I bought him Dippin' Dots and a second cheeseburger. I emailed his coach to say I'd pay him back for the food and his coach emailed back and said, "No worries about the $$, it's a joy for me to buy a kid a cheeseburger and icee at the ball park." Aww, what a sweet coach. It's really been a good baseball year.

I guess I'll sign off here and go try to make this day better. It's actually seriously raining now, not just being gloomy. We might even have a thunderstorm like the one that sent us home from Sunday's game. I could do some work, but I think that since I am sick, I am going to take a sick day: climb back into bed and read to my heart's content. I recently discovered (via another blogger I follow) the Foreigner novels by C.J. Cherryh and am loving them so much. They are anthropological science fiction, with a linguist as the main character and interesting discussions about language. The first one, Foreigner, was tough to get into, but once I finally did I didn't want it to end. Fortunately there are 17 other books in the series -- and more to come. I've already finished the second one, Invader, and am halfway through Inheritor, with (as you can see) Precursor all checked out of the library and ready to go. There's a very hot human-alien romance at the center of them and all the characters are well described and appealing. I'm completely caught up in them, which is fun.

I still have to plan my summer -- themes for the weeks, an exercise and food plan, and a scheme for getting back into political action, which I have been letting languish -- but I'll save that for next time. Today I need a break. Sometimes you just do.