Liminal Spaces

 I feel like I'm in-between in a variety of ways right now. The kids are back at school, but I'm not a true empty-nester, any more than I was a true single parent when Matt was traveling for weeks at a time. Eve will be home in five weeks and they'll both be here for extended breaks at Christmas. I'm not cleaning out their rooms and they both still have dirty clothes in my laundry. This strikes me as a kind of gentle transition period for when they actually have their own places. Right now I can enjoy cooking for just two (or one, more often) for a few weeks and look forward to them coming home.

I'm not working full-time, but I'm working more than I have for quite a few years. This is fine from every point of view except physical. I have a variety of chronic pain/auto-immune issues of which each on their own would be manageable, but all together I'm done in by the end of a work week, sometimes by the end of a work day. I'm doing a few things to try to address most of them, and feeling less panicky than I was by forcing myself to take one day at a time. Sometimes I worry about feeling worse before I actually do, and forget that 1) I only have to do this if I want to and 2) I can do hard things, especially short term. There's a distinct possibility of a strike this school year, in which case I will have the opposite, arguably worse, problem, so I'm going to dig in and try to enjoy the good aspects while I can. 

It's September, but it's hotter this week than it's been for more than August. It was an absolutely terrible time for everyone to have to go back to school - the air conditioning, if there is any, is not remotely equal to combating this kind of heat and humidity. If there is no air conditioning? Inhumane. The libraries have been surprisingly cool, when all winter I'm dying - I guess maybe whatever is happening with the air system happens extra in the library. We've been letting teachers and whole classes come in to escape portables or upstairs classrooms. One poor teacher came in from the portable looking like she'd been swimming. 

We had an inexpressibly (fear not, I will still take a crack at expressing it) lovely Labour Day weekend with Matt's family. Eve had a fantastic last week with friends when her BFF came back from Greece a week before they both headed back to school. It was a wonderful summer and I'm generally ready to try to establish some fall routines (working, cooking, more yoga, writing, attacking house issues, never seeing my husband). I felt much less ready for summer, even though I was looking forward to it, so my traditional fall mood and energy upswing seems to have engaged. Maybe if I force myself to make a doctor's appointment I can work on trying to extend it for more than four months. 

My Facebook memory from this day in 2017 said I didn't find a job but did write this blog post. Now I have four little jobs (the same job at four schools, but I like calling them baby jobs) and am still blogging. Facebook memories have also reminded me that I tend to spin out and question all my life choices and feel terrible about myself at this time of year, which I NEVER REMEMBER. Who'd have thought that after all, something as simple as Facebook Memories would save us all? Well, just me, really.