*Today is the last day of my summer vacation.  Tomorrow is the first day of faculty professional development week and school “officially” starts two weeks from tomorrow. Part of me is excited, like I said, and part of me is this:

*Devon doesn’t go back for two weeks and I just asked him what he’s going to do all by his lonesome for the next two weeks and he’s like “I have no idea other than be bored out of my mind…probably see a movie…or….five….I don’t know”.  Haha!  He talks so big sometimes about how happy he is in his alone time, and he is (as am I), but he’s so not good with a lot of it.  He goes like a day or two at home with just himself and then he’s over it.  He starts texting me “when are you coming home?!?!?!”  Okay, maybe not that whiny….but….close.

*He did help me move all my stuff into my new office yesterday.  It’s so nice to have it all out of my house and where it belongs.  None of it has been put away there, mind you, but at least it’s all there.  I’ll do pictures and a small tour of it once it’s all done.  It needs a bookshelf and a table and I need to get some sort of a rug for it (since it’s tiled floors), so it’s got some work.  But, it’s a really nice size, has a good big window and will work really well for me.  AND it’s actually where the students are, unlike at Keough where I was on the other side of the building; here I’m right in the middle of everything which is great.

*I think I’m all about keeping this short and sweet this week so I can enjoy some down time before the school routines start up again.

 

Hope everyone is having a great week!

*I can’t believe this coming week is my “last” week of summer.  Holy Cross (my new school) has two weeks of orientations between new faculty orientation (which I obviously have to attend), regular back to school faculty stuff, and various student orientations.  So, I’m back to work as of Monday the 14th and the classes begin on August 28th.  Despite MD signing a law that states all schools will now begin after Labor Day, Holy Cross is one of the school’s that filed an exemption so we start before Labor Day. In all fairness, I’m not mad about it, I have three weeks off at Christmas and two weeks off for Easter.  Public schools have a week at Christmas and a 4 day weekend for Easter this year. I’ll take longer breaks over going back after Labor Day.

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*We spent most of yesterday at Devon’s Mom’s house for an early birthday celebration for me.  It became tradition that she made her kids her famous paella for their birthdays and the past couple of years, she’s made it for mine too, which is very sweet of her.  It is also unbelievably delicious.  Between that, biscuits and a delicious 7-Up cake that she makes it made for an amazing birthday dinner.

*Devon also had a tux fitting for one of his best friend’s who is getting married on Thanksgiving weekend yesterday while we were out with his mom.  This friend is also one of Devon’s groomsmen.  It is going to be extremely weird seeing him in a tux.  He’s always told me I’ll only see him in a suit once, which would be our wedding day; now I get to see him in one twice; this should be fun…for me.  Now, I just need to figure out what I’m wearing to this wedding.  So much pressure.

*I now have two weeks remaining of summer before I have to go back to work.  Part of me is obviously really excited then there is another part that is going “OMG SUMMER IS OVER!”  Frankly, once my birthday hits, for me, summer can be over; I’m good.  But now I’m also seeing all of the things that I wanted to do that hasn’t been done yet, so I have a pretty long to-do list that I’m trying to see if I can get at least half-way done before I go back.

*One of the things is I desperately need to clean out my closets.  I actually made a donation pick-up appointment with the Salvation Army to give me motivation to get everything cleared out.  They will be here on August 7th, so it gives me about a week to purge everything I’m wanting to get rid of.

*OH and last but not least, I made a wedding dress try-on appointment for next Saturday!!  I doubt I’m going to buy anything, but I really just need to see how dresses look on me.  I haven’t put on a dress in years, since I hate them, and while I can look in a magazine, it doesn’t mean I know what these dress shapes will look like on my body. Hopefully, I can find at least a couple silhouettes that I like to pursue further.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

*First and foremost……on Thursday, I accepted an offer for a new job for the next school year!  I haven’t signed the contract yet just because the president of the school is on vacation for a week, but I’ve already got an email address, I’ve met most of the people I’ll be working with and everything.  You guys, I am so excited.  It feels like a 1,000 lb weight was just lifted from my shoulders; it’s so amazing to know I have a new school to start with in the fall.  It’s a private, all-girls, Catholic school again which wasn’t really the goal honestly, but it’s an amazing school; very prestigious, it’s celebrating it’s 150th year this coming school year.  It’s down in Rockville, MD (so the drive will suck a little, but I can live with it); extremely well established, high enrollment, very well supported by the district and the families/community.  To make it even better, the counseling department is also very well established, respected, and supported by the administration.  I will be one of 5 counselors, which is new for me, but really exciting; and the department is a well-oiled machine, so it’ll be nice to not feel like I have to go in and re-invent the wheel like I’ve had to do in the past.  Plus, I’ll be the sole counselor of all their students with learning disabilities, so while I have a smaller caseload than the rest, my students typically require more time, so it’s balancing out.  Guys….I’m just so excited.  I’ll talk more about it later, but I just had to share the amazing news really quickly because I’m just giddy.  🙂

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*Why yes, I am alive.  I promise.

*I was kind of throwing myself a pity party last week.  You know those times where you just feel completely “blah” about all things? That was pretty much my life last week.  I visited my school for the final time the day it closed, which I don’t think really helped things, but it was something I felt like I had to do.  Having the reality of school closing, still in process for another school, hopefully, for next year, and a bunch of other things just really made me kind of down.  So, I had a little pity party for myself and I just went quiet in most areas.  I don’t think I really posted on Instagram either until Friday, I just wasn’t really feeling a lot of human contact.  I can’t say that I’m a ton better, but I’m not in full pity party mode at the moment, so there’s progress.

*One “perk”, I suppose, is that I was able to keep my work laptop, which is nice because I was debating a new one at Christmas since my old one died awhile ago.  Having this laptop makes blogging here easier because, I can sit on the couch and watch TV while blogging.  Normally, if I wanted to do that, I’d do some on my iPad, which really isn’t the best device for typing and editing and whatnot; and while I have my desktop computer in the office, it sometimes makes me feel locked away, so I like having the laptop.  It was still networked into my school’s domain, so it took a little bit to get it all unhooked and set up just for my personal use at home.  But it’s up and running and I can now work on a lot more blogging stuff that I’ve been wanting to get done.

*Speaking of blogging, I might be doing a small re-design here.  Not so much layout/background, but just in terms of navigation.  I’ve been wanting to re-purpose some pages and tabs that aren’t used as frequently and make some of my most popular content easier to get to.  Now that I have my shiny new laptop functioning, I’ll be able to get that done comfortably.

*I have a whole list of blog posts to get written up.  My goal is to get all the photos edited and everything written up this week so they can just be scheduled out for the next few weeks.  This way if I feel the need for another pity party, I won’t leave everyone hanging.

*In other news…..my birthday is in (almost) exactly one month!  One month from yesterday anyway.  I will be 31 this year.  I have no clue what I want to do and I know Devon’s going to ask eventually, but no clue.  Suggestions are welcomed, so much.

*Also, our anniversary is coming up in about a week and a half.  On July 20th, it will be 4 years that we’ve been together.  That seems crazy to me and in two completely different ways.  It seems weird that it’s only been four years considering we’ve known each other for 13 years at this point and it also seems weird that it’s been 4 years ALREADY.  We’ve been through so much and done so much in four years that it feels like these years have just flown by.  It’s a weird little dichotomy in my head.

Hope everyone had a great week!