Officially Fall

September was brutal this year. It felt very busy – lots of meetings and events. I suppose it always feels this way but this year it seemed to drag on forever. I was VERY happy when it was finally over.

I am relatively happy at work right now. I am SO GRATEFUL to not be commuting to the other campus, and the 4th grade class is very low key. They are squirrely and hard to keep on task but they are also enthusiastic and appreciative. It has definitely been a positive change for me.

I’m creating a lot of new stuff for work, which is my favorite part of my job. Most of it was inspired by the two-week professional development I did over the summer. We have first follow up for that later this month and I’m excited to share what I’ve done.

It’s officially fall which means HEAT WAVES in the Bay Area. September, October, and November are generally our warmest months. We are getting stretches where the mornings are cool enough to warrant slippers (at least in our poorly insulated house), but we’re also getting lots of 80* days (in the city – it’s generally 90+ on the peninsula on those days). This weekend it’s really warm, but by now we all know this is par for the course in our area.

We even had a short but intense earthquake on Saturday. I feel like those tend to happen in the fall, but maybe I’m just imaging that.

It’s also Halloween costume and planning my son’s birthday time. My kids both know what they want to be and I’ve purchased their costumes (mostly). My son is having his first birthday party and we’ve booked the park and bouncy house (and changed the bookings for both of those when most of his friends couldn’t make it on the original date and time). I definitely enjoy October and Halloween (and I LOVE teaching Day of the Dead), but this year I’m having a hard time finding the energy to decorate. Maybe next weekend, when we get Monday off.

The kids are fully transitioned into the new school year. They both like their teachers and classes. My daughter is in a 4/5 class at her school and initially I was really nervous because the teacher is new (this is only her third year teaching and her first with an actual teaching credential) and split classes can be challenging, especially in a school with so many students who are not at grade level. But the teacher ended up being awesome and now I know she’ll have her again next year which is a big relief because the straight 5th grade at her school is up in the middle school hallway and has been plagued with teacher turn over and other issues that have had me contemplating pulling her for her last year of elementary school. Now I don’t have to deal with any of that. My son has my daughter’s K teacher, and we love her, so I know he’s in good hands. After a year away from an immersion classroom his Spanish is flourishing. I am so glad my kids are at a Spanish Immersion school.

Martial Arts has been going well. I plan to test for my green belt before the new year and I’m getting myself to the classes I need to adequately prepare. You start learning a whole new kind of movement as a green belt and I am so ready to move past the straight-line punches and kicks I have (mostly) mastered to the elegant curves and hooks learned at the higher belt level. I continue to be invigorated by sparring; I find that I learn more about myself in sparring than anywhere else in my life right now.

Not much else to report. I want to say I think about writing here a lot, but that is actually the problem – I don’t! Well that’s not entirely true. I think about it during the day when I have no time to write, but I never remember at home in the evenings when I could actually sit down with my computer. It’s just not a habit for me anymore, and I doubt it ever will be again. I must admit, when it comes time to pay for this space again I think it’s likely that I won’t. I just don’t feel the pull to write here anymore, and throwing money at something I don’t love is hard to justify. We’ll see.