It's the late middle of July in Nashville, Tennessee, and I am thankful for the rain this morning. It's just shy of 6 am and it's 72 degrees and according to timeanddate.com, dawn came 11 minutes ago. A gray cloudy sky still smothers the world outside my windows and the streets are dark and shiny with the light rain falling. As I type it grows brighter gray by the minute.

The first thing I did after coming down the stairs from our bedroom with Watson leading the way was to approach the locked back storm door and peer into the dim light to see the rain chain hanging from our porch gutter cascading down with water. Sweet water, Rare water this summer.

Sitting on our lush leather sectional before the 61" flatscreen tv last night, enjoying a big dinner salad prepared by my love, we rediscovered Killing Eve last night, starting back up from where we left off after episode 1 of the third season. I don't recall why we did not continue--something else more glittery came along, we switched to another series on a whim, it was in one of those platform transitions where we ditched the Roku and bought an AppleTV device, something. Maybe we discovered Ted Lasso.

Whatever the case, it's a doozy of a series and we have most of this season and all of season four to enjoy. During the show, I enjoyed a Vesper Martini and Lee Ann drank some Pino Grigio and we sipped waters and laughed and talked, me on the sofa, she in the luxurious, monster Barcalounger we bought on sale during her recuperation from emergency intestinal surgery this year. We probably watched four episodes, bingelike, until agreeing it was time for bed and snuggle time.

Life does not suck. I don't know what I thought retirement would be like, but likely it was like this. I like it. Like, did I say "like" too much there?

After a whirlwind pair of trips away from home (see most recent posts), I like our home. 

I spent yesterday and most of the previous two days totally relaxing, sort of an enforced relaxing due to my sprained hip (self-diagnosed) from over-exertion on Montana. I shouldn't say that, really, because it was just a strain imposed by a less-than-intentional steep step up out of Blanchard Lake 

Pano at (little) Blanchard Lake off US83. We fished a bit off a little pier on Harper's Lake then drove on a smidge to this little gem. The creek comes in at the right of this pic and my handsome son Colin surveys the breathtaking surroundings. Ah, Montana. 

after standing in the cold mountain creek water that fed it for maybe an hour and a half. I remember Colin reaching down from above to help me make that step and I remember a slight pulling sensation as I pushed myself up with my left leg. Two days later, getting up from a seat on my last of eight air flights in 2 weeks, I felt it again. That's when I started limping. It got progressively worse.

Now, 3 days later, it gets progressively later. The weakness is still there, but I'm not grimacing or moaning out loud when I move my left leg. I walked the dog for a mile yesterday and there was a little backsliding in the pain department, but it was worth it. I'm on the mend. I'm going to bounce around some antique stores with Rocky today. 

It's funny the games the mind plays. When the pain was at its worst, and it was bad, I kept conjuring in my head the phrase, "degenerative bone disease," knowing that was malarky but teasing myself with it anyway, much like when I hear the one "...crashed on takeoff" when I'm strapped into any plane during lift off from the tarmac. I counter that by repeating a mantra that goes, "I love you Lee Ann, I love you Miranda, I love you Colin, I love you Watson, I love you Ed, I love you Tim, I love you Katie, I love you Rocky, I love you Jimmy, I love you Seamus" until the plan levels off into its flight. On repetitions, I often add other names: I love a lot of people. If I left you off the list, don't get your knickers in a twist. I remembered to add you as it grew. The cool thing about these last four takeoffs was that I got to say the first sentence to Lee Ann, as I held her hand. 

As the bright green happy red maple in the front yard releases unhurried droplets of water, leaf to green green leaf, as Fred the Fly (wondering how the hell he gets out of here back into the vast outside) wanders beyond my white wooden blinds on the window overlooking the porch and my little idyllic rain garden, as Watson sleeps behind me on my office rug in my beautiful home, I just want to say I'm grateful. 

I am grateful. And, oh, I finished a painting yesterday. I just need to seal it up with a layer or two of shiny polyethylene glaze and it's done. Here's the final form it took:

blue heron on destin rooftop

I really do enjoy painting on these reclaimed cast-off 2x10 (and other size) pieces of lumber. Always from photos I have taken with my iPhone. I think it's a thing. Next up I'm going to try a pano on a wider 2x6 I picked up in an alley walking Watson yesterday. We'll see. 

That's my blathering for today. Peace.

Sojourn to the Berkshires Day 1

 Good morning from the Berkshires, Great Barrington, Massachusetts, particularly. I'm going a-walking this chill morning. I'll start a little travelogue here and update it to keep records of images I'll collect in my travels here. The entire Google album of my little sojourn will be archived here.

It's only a two day trip, as mentioned in my previous post, but one of my new goals in iPhotography is to collect images I may want to paint in the future. 

Tuesday I walked my best buddy Watson and tossed him into Casper the Friendly Kia to take him to K9 Logics, his home away from home, for fun on the farm. He initially wanted to drive.

No, Watson, you may not drive Casper the Friendly Kia

In the afternoon I met my dear bud Rocky at Tailgate Headquarters for a bite to eat and a beer, capped off with a cigar. After an early to-bed, Lee Ann and I were up by 4:30 so she could drop me off at BNA for the trip.

I made my away through the crowded airport through security and after grabbing a turkey tomato sandwich at the high tech Amazon islands (how cool to register your handprint to a credit card, get want you want, and leave without any further interaction with a cashier--bye-bye jobs) boarded a 7:07 AM American Airlines flight to Albany, NY, via Chicago, IL. The first flight was on a 737, so I crossed my fingers a lot. All good excepting the flight was around 40 minutes early arriving and we sat on the ORD tarmac for 45 of that awaiting permission to dock. I had around 30 minutes left to snag my flight to Albany. That turned out to be on a teenyplane, you know the ones with two seats on the right and one on the left and not enough headroom for 6-footers. I power-walked and they were just calling Groups 6 and 7 to board when I huffed up to the gate, which was about as distant from my landing gate as they could make it. That flight was fine, just cramped for leg room, and I made my way to the car rental tables only to find the Enterprise booth empty, with a sign on the plexi telling me to "Please proceed to the Alamo, National rental station in the parking lot." 

I did so and the nice attendant-of-many-rental-services, Sam, who gave me my options. There was a Dodge Charger, a Toyota Camry, and a Kia Forte. I asked Sam which one he would pick, just for fun. He unhesitatingly said, "I would personally take the Charger. It's sporty and a little ballsy, you know, a muscle car, and not too hard on mileage." I did. Little did I realize it would get even better. I walked the way Sam pointed and found the purple car:

Bruno the Charger

What hat a lovely drive down southeast to my motel. Here are two quick snaps I took whilst the car was resting:

Waiting for his master's voice! Nipper is patient.

One of those bridge-is-one-lane red lights

I made it to my motel around 3:00, after winding through blue highway small towns and enjoying the view at every turn. I plan to take my time up to the airport for my late afternoon flight on Friday and see what I can see in some of those towns. Though I see on the news that beaucoup holiday flights are being cancelled all over and I should give myself 3 hours at the airport. 

I got settled and drove out to explore a little and catch that late lunch I needed, landing at the picturesque and friendly Barrington Brewery and Restaurant only a couple long blocks away from the Fairfield Inn by Marriot where I am staying. I caught a beer at small but cozy bar

 

and after Jimmy called to say he was on the way I moved to a table where we could talk privately. We hadn't seen each other in 7 years--since my lovely daughter Miranda's wedding in Nashville--and I got a little weepy for a number of reasons when I got my long delinquent hug. We sat, talking for a bit. There have been some complications that I gather could have been much worse (thank you, universe, for it not being that) that have precluded Riad, Jimmy's beautiful wife, and Seamus, his son and my godson, from attending, which was the plan. I won't elaborate here, and though I am disappointed to lose those hug opportunities it is what it is, and everyone is predicted to be okay. These complications bring an oddly absurd level to the performance I will see tonight and which Jimmy will repeat for every night for the play's two week run. I am certain it will be powerful however it goes: One accomplished actor, around 2 hours, ~11,000 words, in the small Leibowitz Black Box Theater at Bard College, taking us into the present tense beginning 12 years ago in the family's hospital "home."

Jimmy had to leave to run lines with his director, Robert Egan, and to get some rest. I got a selfie, finished my delicious BBandR fish and chips, and headed back to the motel to get some rest myself. I slept pretty well. Got up this morning for the "free" breakfast, came here to blog. As you know, I'm committed to adopting that habit more consistently. Enjoy it or not, it's my "book."

Here:

Me and Jimmy, a few years later; see previous post

More later. It's 9:12 in the morning and I'm going Great Barrington exploring.

Friday ramblings

Hi. My goal is to be mostly scheduliberated. I can do this.

Let's see. Today is Friday and as of 5:36 this morning I have no appointments, just a loose commitment to Rocky for breakfast in Ashland City. There is no time set for that but it'll likely be early, in the 7 to 8 o'clock range. According to my iWatch it's only 61 degrees out there so an early walk with Watson, my "Australian Healer," is also likely. I primed a few rescued pieces of scrap lumber for painting yeseterday, and I have the image of the eerie cinder block wall mystery exterior door up on both monitors for reference, just waiting for a paintbrush to touch the wood for the first time. One "canvas", 10 1/2" by 5 1/2",  awaits on the tabletop easel I treated myself to last week. I will continue my online mandolin class with Sierra and that's at least an hour, maybe two. I doctored the hot tub chemical balances yesterday but I will check with a test strip today and do that again if needed today, though that's improbable. I may need to go get new kitchen flowers today since the yellow roses I bought and set out three days ago seem to be choking already. None of them has necked but it's in the near future according to their sad look. If the wind remains still out, I plan to finally pull out my drone and get it airborne again. Lots to do.

That's my report for the morning. I will check back here and assess my day in late afternoon. My plan is to make sure I am living healthy, practicing self care, making/creating, and doing just fine without a schedule. My goal is to be mostly scheduliberated. I can do this.

Good? Good.

LATER

Hi again. Immediately after typing the above I went down a rabbit hole at about.me, revising my info to reflect my new status as retired. Contacted Rocky and verified 9am at Cody's. Now I'm off to walk with my best canine friend.

MUCH LATER

Saturday morning. Up late, like right around 7:30, and spent some time at my desk cruising Instagram and posted a pic from the work finished to date on a new painting. I fleshed it out yesterday and added to it today, Just pencil on primed pine 2x6 lumber around 10 or 11 inches wide. Here's the pic:

I'll wash and sponge paint and who knows what all with this one. I love that the lumber piece is flawed/scraped along the top. And I will likely carry the image along the sides and bottom like I did for the goingdown Rocky's driveway painting. I think I'm on to something. At any rate, it's fun, and it's a new body of creative work for me. Ya.

I met Rocky's at Cody's right at  did not do 9. We had eggs over easy, bacon, grits, and biscuits and gravy. A heavy breakfast but it served as lunch as well. I did not do my mandolin class. Instead, I decided to change my strings on my damaged A-5 Gibson mandolin and my father-in-law's Framus classical guitar. That took, friends and neighbors, around 2 1/2 hours to do right. Then it took maybe 45 minutes to play it into keeping a tuning, as strings kept sliding and thankfully finally tightened up. I had to google how to tie classical guitar strings at the bridge. I don't think the beautiful guitar had been restrung in 3 decades or more--my father-in-law had it hanging on his wall and to my knowledge never played it. It all worked, and I then noodled on the thing, improvisationally, for another 45 minutes. Time flies when you're having fun. 

I did treat the hot tub. I did not go buy flowers, though I did toss the old ones out and get the dishwasher run and the kitchen parred up to neatness. Nor did I drone. But look at how many good things I have to choose from tomorrow, and the next day! Today, Lee Ann's home and we're planning a Saturday together. That, I love. 

So, that's a one-shot window into my retirement plan. I will not be doing this sort of blog post often. My retirement plan is: do something creative every day, spend good time walking my old pup, fish when I can, exercise and eat well, be with friends or enjoy my own company as often as I can, and spend time with my lovely love whenever I can. Music. Art. Writing. Gardening. Being. Exploring.

More later.

Scheduliberated!

 Happy birthday to me, celebrating 72 trips around Old Sol. AND happy retirement, only 2 days away as I write. I want to say a few things about retirement, or rather about the generally accepted social descriptor for it: "retired."

Thinking about actually being it, I began letting friends and colleagues know my plans a month or two ago. It took a good long while to jump through the hoops a "retiree" needs to master, but I was generally feeling pretty darned good about it all. Then I began noticing:  Nearly everyone who discusses it with me brings a number of negative connotations into our communication. 

"What are you going to do?" "Won't you be bored?" "You'll be looking for a part-time job, won't you?" "I'd be so bored." Or, from several folks' personal experience, "I got tired of sitting around at home, so I got this job/volunteered here. It keeps me busy." That's the  story I have heard from a tenured now 120 day former retiree in my school, from a clerk in a liquor store in Chattanooga, and from a dear man who brings meals to my school (soon my former school) on a weekly basis. I am certain that I'll hear it again.

Well. My dear old daddy used to tell us whiney boys, "If you're bored it's your own damned fault." Really, he did. And I took it to heart, I guess. 

1. I will not be looking for a part-time job. Or a full-time job.
2. I do not get bored. 
3. I love my home and keeping it a nice place to be (which is work, by the way). 
4. And I will be just as busy as I want to be. I'll fish, I'll write, I'll get better at my mandolin and my guitar and my  bass guitar. I'll draw and paint. I'll spend more time enjoying my life with its one true love, Lee Ann; I'll be more available to my beautiful children--Miranda and Tim and Colin and Kat; I'll explore Tennessee; I'll travel frequently/ I'll, I'll, I'll...God knows what, you can bet if it's interesting I'll be doing it.

What is a way to refer to retirement that does not drag in all the negatives? 

A search for synonyms at Thesaurus.com yields 29 synonyms for "retired." These are arranged in three tabs for one's viewing pleasure, according to that respectable resource. The next time a new aquaintance asks me the most common question any adult asks a new aquaintance, "What to you do do?," how do you think I might reply? Should I choose to respond with one of these? 

• The first tab is "adj. having withdrawn from active life." Ow. Its examples are:
• elderly
• resigned
• superannuated
• emeritus, emerita (I kind of like that one)
• in retirement
• The second is "adj. having been withdrawn, with
• detached
• removed
• secluded
• sequestered
• apart
• isolated
• retreated
• seperated
• withdrawn
• distant
• The third? "adj. done working"
• discharged
• humble
• sequestered
• withdrawn
• inactive
• retiring
• immured
• shy
• cidevant
• otiose
• cloistered
• secluded
• superannuated
• emeritus
• unfrequented

What the hell does "otiose" mean, anyway? Further investigation brings up "idle," "indolent," "listless," and "slothful" as synonyms for otiose. Dig this: its definition at Dictionary.com is 

adjective

1. being at leisure; idle; indolent.
2. ineffective or futile.
3. superfluous or useless.

So friends, I'm over it. That may be a little odd, since, really, I'm just beginning it. But here, I'm coining a word. Right here, right now. Ready?

New acquaintance: "So, what do you do?"

Me. "Oh, I'm(image from cooltext.com).

There. And, from my dear friends Matt amd Anitra, a birthday treat:

Moving through 2019 (it's all going to be okay)

Blogslacker that I am, I drop in here on a Saturday morning to share with you that I'm actually really blogging more regularly at my classroom blog. To see a few things, head on over to the Falcons Tech Lab blog and subscribe to that one if you want to keep up. More and more, I'm focusing on my work at my work, trying to establish a solid learning environment for my ~800 students who cycle through it in the course of a school year in 9 week chunks.
It's a continually changing set of challenges, with 8 good-sized classes each 9 weeks, coming in in alternating A-day/B-day rotations. Our kids are largely in Hispanic-rooted families. Recently I polled a 9-weeks set of classes to see exactly how the language piece breaks down. This was in the way of an end of quarter reflections poll, using Google Forms as its vehicle. Look at this:

from Falcons Tech Lab classroom poll end of quarter 3, 2019

I do maybe have one little announcement. Those close to me may remember that I have been planning to retire at the end of the school year 2019-2020. Well, I'm rethinking that. Although I will have just turned 70 at the end of that May, I think I'm good to continue teaching, I like to joke, until they haul me out of my lab with a toe tag. I absolutely love my work, and now, after persevering through the extraordinarily challenging and frustrating two years that involved teaching in a very difficult inner-city elementary school and then working in two separate buildings with two less than optimal computer setups I am in a lab that is new (albeit with old, wi-fi connected, PCs) and beautiful and which I am making work to everyone's learning advantage. We got into Minecraft successfully this past quarter, and through initial forays into that platform I am inspired to tweak procedures and lessons to really take kids forward in digital citizenship, empathy, conceptual skills, and coding. Of course we will be elsewhere in each 9 weeks journey, but this development is, as I say, inspirational.

The weather over Spring Break, which ends tomorrow night, has been odd, which kept me off my favorite fishing lake, Lake Marrowbone; but that has led to some new organization of curriculum as well as time with my dear son Colin. Today, Saturday, Miranda and Tim are coming over to hang out and have a big vegetable dinner at home with us, then Colin and I will uber downtown to the Mother Church, Ryman Auditorium, to see and hear a favorite indie performer, Kurt Vile, with his band The Violators, opened by The Sadies. It'll be a great time. Tomorrow will be a good day, then I meet my ~200 new students Monday and we are off to new explorations and adventures in the Falcons Tech Lab. I'm good to go.

May you live and learn. Be Good and Have Fun...