Tag Archives: summer

First official day back

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I’m headed to our school board office this morning for our first admin meeting of the year. There are years when this day arrives and I sit in bewilderment wondering what happened to my summer? But this year is one of those years where I’ve felt like I’ve had a wonderful break and I’m ready for the new year.

My regular routine starts today. I’m not writing this at a random time of day, or squeezing my writing in right before bed (like last night). Rather, I’m up early, I’ve already meditated, and I’m getting on the treadmill as soon as I publish this. It feels good to be back to my routine.

The new year brings with it both excitement and trepidation. I always start the year with specific goals in mind, and I feel enthusiastic, yet apprehensive. The year always holds so much promise. New plans, new students, new and unexpected scenarios all lie ahead.

There is a lot of prep work to do, but no amount of prep makes you feel 100% prepared. Planning only gets you so far when you are dealing with so many people in different roles. You might be calm and ready, but others will be nervous and unpredictable. No matter how well planned you may be, unexpected things will happen.

Schools are places of growth and learning, and real learning doesn’t happen smoothly and with conformity. Things don’t always go as planned. Yet, that’s part of the excitement. The unknown, the unexpected, the surprises along the way, the connections you make, the solutions you work on, and the collaboration required, are all part of what makes this job exciting and unique.

It’s the first day back, and so a whole new adventure begins…

Blackberry season

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For me blackberry season is bitter sweet. I love the taste, and enjoy picking and eating them, but they are also a reminder that summer is coming to an end. Blackberries, or blackblellies as my oldest daughter first called them, are so unique.

I’ve already shared that,

“Blackberries are a unique fruit. I can eat a handful of raspberries, strawberries, or blueberries, and it doesn’t matter how many I put in my mouth, I enjoy them all the same. That’s not the case for blackberries. Blackberries taste better when you have one at a time. Two blackberries in your mouth are not as enjoyable as just one.”

So, carefully, watching for thorns, I search for ripe berries. I pick them and place them one-at-a-time in my mouth… and I savour every one. Yes, summer is coming to an end, but I have the joy of blackberries to help soften the blow.

Pools Out for Summer

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It took a good part of the weekend, but I got the pool set up for the summer. The water pump driven solar panels are up, but as you can see in the image the pool is not quite full yet and so I still have to test all my pluming connections for leaks… but the hard part is done.

For the past few years the ritual of getting this pool ready has marked the start of summer for me. While it will be at least 2 weeks before it gets warm enough to swim, having it up and spending more time in the back yard makes the last few weeks of school a lot more enjoyable. It certainly helps that it’s also bright out a lot later.

The funny thing is that I really don’t go in the pool much. My wife loves it and gets in regularly, while I mostly go in to vacuum it. I might sit on an inflatable seat a handful of times at the most, but I love the hot tub and would rather sit in it than the pool. For me the pool isn’t a destination, it’s a symbol, a symbol of summer.

Off again

In a few hours I fly back ‘home’ to Toronto to visit my mom and sisters. It’s just me going, my family is staying back. It’s hard to believe that I’m already more than 2/3rds through summer and I’m basically back at work after this trip.

That said this has been a rejuvenating summer and will continue to be so on this next trip. I needed this. I really needed this.

Holidays are battery charges and I feel like I’ve already had a good charge. Last school year was filled with new challenges and new health issues and the loss of my dad. Sure I still have a long road ahead with my pinched nerve from a herniated disc, but I am not in pain and I’m on the mend… and I’m on the road again.

This is my third of 4 trips home this summer and the first one where I won’t be in agony, I’m really looking forward to it!

Errands day

Some days are just task after task. The day feels slow then you look back and realize that it was a good day filled with small accomplishments.

My favourite thing to do with errands is to listen to a book. Something like watering plants suddenly feels like it’s worthwhile doing. But some tasks pull me away from my book and I find myself rewinding to re-listen at times. Still, this isn’t work, it’s errands. And if I’m searching through camping gear and forget that I’m also listening to a book, that’s ok.

Getting stuff done always feels good after the fact. Check a few things off of the ‘to do’ list, and listen to a good spy novel while I’m at it… sounds like a pretty good summer day to me.

Summer vacation

Three more days of work and then I’m off on holidays!

I’m only home for 10 days this summer. I have 3 very different trips planned, each with their own benefits. I’ll be staying at a resort, I’ll be camping in a trailer, and I’ll be visiting my mom. That’s over a month away from home, with a couple less-than-a-week gaps.

I’m excited about all 3 trips, and I know I’ll come back to work well rested. I also wish that I had a few more days to enjoy at home. It’s weird. I’m not complaining, and I wouldn’t want to shorten any of the trips, I just also wish I could spend a bit more time holidaying from the comfort of my house.

I say this is weird because I’m not really a homebody. I enjoy travel, and I’m not overly attached to my bed. Part of me is nomadic, and I can feel pretty at home away from home, even sleeping on a couch at my mom’s place. Maybe it’s our recent renovation, my home feels so much more comfortable now.

Regardless, I have a fantastic summer planned, and I haven’t looked forward to a summer this much in a long time. This school year kicked me in the butt, mostly but not only because of my health. I missed a lot of the year and felt like I was always catching up, always rushing things I am usually on top of, and even dropping things that I don’t usually drop.

I couldn’t pick a better year to jam pack with holidays. Sun and fun, rest and relaxation, and family… all squeezed into an amazing summer that happens to be mostly away from home.

Roughing it

Roughing it means something totally different as you get older. I used to camp on the ground, in a tent. Then we started bringing an inflatable bed. Now we are renting a trailer that will be dropped off at the campsite for us… this is the third time we are doing this, and it’s as rough as we might get for a while.

I’ve been camping, years ago, where we had to carry everything in and out, and pump water through a filter in streams and add a couple drops of iodine to purify it so we can drink it. Then with kids we used to bring a foldable kitchen sink with us to make meal prep easier in drive-in campsites. Now we don’t camp anywhere that doesn’t have taps nearby and washrooms with showers.

Maybe some day I’ll do a big trip where I really rough it again, but for now, roughing it includes a fair bit of luxury, and I’m happy to enjoy the comforts… I’m still going to a campground and not a hotel so in my books, I’m still roughing it.

Routine woes

It’s the last day of school for teachers, and although I will be in next week I’ve already started to alter my early morning schedule. No workout this morning and the latest I’ve written for this blog on a school day since I started writing daily in the summer of 2019.

This is a bit of a wake up call for me. My pattern for workouts and meditation start to fall apart in the summer when I break my work routine. I don’t want that to happen (again) this summer so I’m going to need to build in a regular routine that works. I used to think routines were boring, now I realize they help me get stuff done.

One routine I broke this year is archery. I haven’t shot arrows in a couple months. I haven’t been upset about it, I let it go because everything felt overwhelming and I decided writing, fitness, and meditation were more important. I hope to build archery back into my summer routine… I just need to figure out what that routine will look like.

I’ve got one more week to figure it out.

2 weeks left

This was part of a text conversation I had with a colleague a couple days ago:

Colleague: “… Generally speaking i feel so out of touch. Need some rest this summer I think.”

Me: “Me too! It’s like we are all in pandemic mode AND we have to do ‘normal’ mode on top of that… it doesn’t feel like a shift, it feels like yet another ‘add-on’. I feel like June started 5 weeks ago.”

Colleague: “Oh man – that’s exactly right.”

The two craziest months to be an educator are September and June. Some people (not in education) will ask, “Are thinks winding down as you head into summer?” They don’t realize that there are so many activities to organize, and that we don’t just coast into July. But this year has really been different. I feel like June mode started in the second week of May.

I’m used to sustaining this pace for 4-5 weeks but I’ve been going at it for 6 weeks already and my body is signalling that it’s time to crash for the summer. Right now 2 more weeks feels like an eternity… and simultaneously like not enough time to get everything done.

In the end, I will get everything done. Some things will get pushed to July, and that’s ok. But I’m going to be reflecting on how and why June mode started so early this year, and figure out how to shorten it next year, because I don’t want another year to end like this.

Two weeks. I’m not usually a count-down-the-days kind of person, but this year I think I’ll make an exception.

Fire and rain

Today on highway 5 my daughter and I saw a plane drop fire retardant (red coloured) water on the hill closest to the highway. There were multiple spots along the closest ridge and hill to our right where we could see smouldering trees. Then we headed into a section of highway where we couldn’t distinguish smoke from fog, and a light misty rain covered our windshield.

We are used to rain in BC, but it has been much too dry and the fires have been out of control. Seeing one of the fires so close to the highway followed by raindrops made me realize how little control we m have over nature. Many fires in BC are not contained, they are forcing evacuations, and endangering lives. It’s one thing to deal with the inconvenience of smoke from a distant fire and yet another to face the flames.

With so many fires burning in BC, it’s a joy to see some rain, and I find myself hoping for much more of it.