Another day in the shop

I'm beginning to understand the comment (accusation?) from some spouses (not mine) that all woodworkers ever do is build things for their shops. It's one of those journey things. You don't know exactly where you're going until you get to the top of a rise and then you can see the next rise.

I resisted using power tools for a long time mainly because they were scary. I can now see the value in them. They allow me to do things faster and, in some cases, more accurately than I can do them by hand. It's a bit like using computers though. It's tempting once you start to think that the computer or the power tool can do everything when, in reality, there are some things that can be better done with a pencil or with a hand tool. Rob Cosman is right when he says that woodworkers do what they do because they enjoy the process; however there are times when I don't really care about the process: I just want the thing built.

That's how it was with the dolly I built for the cabinet in which I'm going to keep my tools. I inherited the cabinet from Mum's house when she moved out and it must be just about as old as I am. There are actually two cabinets. I'm not crazy about the colours but they are made of steel; the drawers work well, and they're very sturdy. Richard will get one for his turning supplies and I'll get one for my hand tools. That's fitting because they spent most of their lives that I know about in the hobby room holding material for Mum's sewing and silver and tools for her silversmithing and lapidary.

Anyway, back to the dolly. I used a pocket hole jig to put the frame together. It was much quicker than doing the dovetails. Just about anything is and sometimes I just don't feel like practicing. Now the tools have a home that I can push rather than lug. Neither the cabinet nor the dolly is elegant and sometimes that's okay. If I had waited to make an elegant tool board I probably wouldn't have done as much woodworking as I have in the last four years. Now I'm thinking about how I can attend to the look of my galley shop (like a galley kitchen where you can stand in one place and reach just about everything.)

I'm listening to a very interesting audio book called A Whole New Mind. In it the author maintains that we are moving from a knowledge age to a conceptual age where we will need to use our right brains to bring ideas together. He urges people to keep design notebooks and to record the design of experiences and not just things. My little shop is functional for the most part. Now I want to make it more attractive. There are many problems of space to be solved and they will certainly call for all my creativity.

Tomorrow I'm going to buy some plywood so I can put a new top on the cabinet. The one that came with it keeps falling off. I want to make a holder for my screwdrivers and think about a base for the mini-bench. There are a few boxes that need to get done. I've got blanks in clamps right now and I surfaced another board so I can cut it in half and glue up another blank tomorrow.

Another of the great things about retirement is that I hardly ever watch the clock unless it's because I want the glue to dry faster. When I was teaching I often watched the clock just waiting for the end of the period. There weren't many times when the end of a class came and I was so absored that I wasn't sure where the time had gone. This is a whole new way of life.

Big honkin' dovetails

Actually, that title may be a bit misleading. I have been working on big honkin' dovetails in 2X4's but I've also been thinking a lot about learning. Learning to cut dovetails has to be one of the hardest things I've ever done. I took the same course three times and didn't get all the projects done once. I was very glad there were no grades involved or I would have failed it three times.

Sometimes I wonder why I didn't give up on this process long ago, especially when I saw others in the classes turn out nearly perfect dovetails the first or second time. There are a couple of reasons. In the first place I'm just bloody stubborn. I don't want to leave something before I've developed a certain amount of facility with it. I remember when I was learning to swim, as an adult, that I had a lot of difficulty learning to do a stride jump. I just kept at it and eventually I got good enough at it to pass the level. Fundamentally I believe that I can learn. I used to feel for the kids who didn't think they could learn. My job as a teacher was to show them they were wrong about that. Sometimes I succeeded and sometimes I didn't.

The other reason I keep at the dovetails is because they are beautiful and I have seen that it's possible to learn how to cut them. I can make other kinds of boxes that are much quicker and people like them just as well but I want to be able to master this skill. I want the satisfaction of having the joint go together just right more times than not. Now I've narrowed the problem areas down to two and I'll take them on one at a time.

The dovetails I was working on today are part of a base for my scroll saw. Of course, anyone in their right mind probably would have used screws and glue or a biscuit joiner to put the thing together. To me, it's all practice and I need plenty of it. I'm still at the stage where good tight-fitting dovetails are the exception rather than the rule; however I now know enough to be able to see where the problems are. When I first started I didn't even know how to identify the problems. I know I have learned, not only because some parts of the joints are getting better, but also because I'm much more aware of the details than I was when I started. Part of learning is being able to do and part of learning is an altered awareness process.

The dovetails in the scroll saw base are not as tight as I'd like them but the base will be sturdy and, perhaps I'm a tiny step closer to being able to reliably produce the kind of joints I want, at least that is my hope. I'll put a picture of the finished base in another blog but there won't be any close-ups of the finished joints, at least not yet.

Autumn on the mountain trails

We changed our hiking plans today. We were going to head for the Highwood Pass in the West Kananaskis but we decided to take the quicker option and go to the East Kananaskis instead. We didn't find any larches on the eastern slopes but that didn't hamper the enjoyment we got from walking in the mountains on an unusually warm and still fall day. We didn't meet a lot of people once we were on the trail. The parking lot was so full that we had to park on the opposite side to where the actual spaces were marked. We met a couple on horses and the guy's horse was particularly skittish. We were having lunch the first time we saw them and then as we came down the trail after them he asked us to please stay put for a while because he was having trouble with his 'city horse.' I guess the poor beast wasn't used to going up and down on steep trails where there were a lot of trees on either side and not much visibility.

As we picked our way around the innumerable piles of horse poop, we began to wonder what the wilderness would be like if horse riders had to pick up after their animals the way dog owners do in the city. Either there were a lot of horses on the trail that we didn't see or horses have digestive systems with an even more rapid through-put than the birds have. The birds are good for about 20 minutes between dumps. It seemed that there were fresh steamies about every 3 meters. We did spend a fair amount of time watching the trail ahead so as not to step in any little surprises. If I had my choice though, I'd certainly rather fresh horse droppings than bear droppings and I'm thankful that we didn't see any of the latter.

The air was quite hazy today so the photos aren't as clear as they might be. I tried out the white balance on my camera designed for out-of-doors shots. It does exactly what it's supposed to do by giving more saturated greens and blues. Our total route was just over 6 km. When we got back to the car I remarked how unusual it was not to have to wear a sweater at 5 pm in the middle of September in the mountains. It was a truly enjoyable day and we even found a geocache. We took a red caribiner and left a Lee Valley universal screw driver. Bonus!

Trying on roles

Since he often works weekends and far into the night, Richard booked a day off yesterday and we decided to stay home and putter around. He did a bit of work, watched a movie and learned some new information about cascading style sheets. We both slopped around in comfy clothes, had coffee in Richard's case, tea in mine, and grazed when we got hungry. It was an idyllic day. We've decided that we're both homebodies at heart although we do like to get out and see the world whether it be the fall colours in the city, a hike in the mountains or travel to other parts of the world.

I spent the day glued to the computer, not something I want to do often, but I've been wondering for a while about the possibilities of creating slide shows with the software I have. Yesterday I actually got to sit down and play with it. I created two slide shows which took me hours and hours but that didn't matter. I was learning about software, not because I needed to do something for a class or to make it part of an assignment, but simply because it interested me. I could spend as much or as little time at it as I liked. It was time well spent. Now I have a basic working knowledge and I'll be able to use it whenever I want to create a slide show. I can see doing one for the cycling club or just putting together various photos because I like to look at them. The only feature I haven't played with is narration and that will come up eventually.

One of the huge perks of being retired is that I can learn what I want to learn when I want to learn it. Everyday I'm grateful for the internet and all of the information I have at my fingertips. I could never go back to having to wait for libraries to be open to have a question answered. My parents always valued learning and, even though they didn't have a lot of money, they bought an Encyclopedia Britanica because they thought it had the best information. It wasn't the easiest for a kid to read and when I had trouble they helped me. I learned that you can make headway on most questions if you're willing to put in the time and do the problem-solving. It's not always possible to get the answers you want but it is almost always possible to go on a satisfying exploration.

In education we talk about life-long learning and the basis of that is curiosity. We are so fortunate to live in an information-rich society so that at any time of the day or night we can take steps to have our curiosity satisfied. Of course, we must be very careful about which sources of information we trust and which we don't but that is no different than it was in the print age. The information does come at us much faster and it's often wrapped in much shinier packages.

And so, part of what I do now is to play and that is part of reinventing myself as something other than a teacher. In doing this I'm moving back to my roots in the visual arts and going from a world where people are paramount to a world where things are paramount: cameras, pencils, hand tools, wood, and of course, the objects I can create using my tools. I'm coming to know what Joseph Campbell means when he instructs, "Follow your bliss." What I do now is still very much connected to people in a different way. I hope the the objects and images I create will bring pleasure to those who view and hold them. That thought takes me into another post about artists I admire for their work and for their thoughts about the role of artists in the world. That subject is for another day.

Photos with the bike

A bicycle is a truly amazing vehicle. It will take you almost anywhere particularly if you have the time to ride it. So often we need to get somewhere in a hurry and so we take the car. Yesterday I took my bike downtown for an appointment and then rode over to have lunch with Katharine. Perhaps I looked a bit out of place in the food court with all the business people but there were a few folks in blue jeans and, I didn't go full out cycling gear. I wore a rather conservative tshirt and had an ordinary pair of shorts over my roadie shorts. Besides I'm really not too concerned about it because I'm such a fashion plate anyway. :-)

It was a gorgeous day and I decided to try to find my way along the Elbow River pathway to the reservoir so I could take some pictures. I really wanted my camera the last time I was around there and didn't have it. I had no map so it was interesting to find my way following bike path and bike route signs. I ended up where I wanted to be but certainly not by the route I intended to take. Note to self: put a bike path map in the rack trunk.

After comparing the pictures I took when walking around Glenmore to the ones I took yesterday, the ones I took on foot are more interesting than the ones I took when I was riding the bike. I'm not sure why that is. Maybe I had more time when walking to consider the possible compositions whereas when I'm riding I have to make the decisions about whether to stop or where to stop more quickly. It's an interesting theory and one which I will be checking out.

Many of the deciduous trees had lost their leaves even since Monday so I suspect if I want to do much more fall photography I'd better get after it in the next couple of days.

Last night was the first meeting of the Southern Alberta Woodworkers Society and joined up. I rode my bike to that too. All in all I clocked 50 km yesterday. Fifty km is harder on a single than on the tandem. File that information away for future reference. Today I've been a bit of a slug. I appreciate so much the luxury of taking it easy on days when I feel like doing it. I can run around again tomorrow.

Small but important events

I see it's been a while since I posted to this blog. One reason is that I didn't have any photos and I find I'm unwilling to put anything up without some sort of visual accompaniment

Back to Sunday which has been a very grumpy day for me for years. I was in the habit of doing the laundry, the grocery shopping and the marking that had been sitting on my desk since Friday night as well as any planning for classes that I had neglected. Around 2 in the afternoon I was looking around for something to do. The laundry was in and there was enough food in the house until Monday. It suddenly struck me that I could actually sit down on the couch and read a book and that's exactly what I did.

Yesterday I rode my bike to meet Judy for coffee at Glenmore Landing and then it was such a nice day I decided to continue around the reservoir the long way. It was the temperature of a summer day although not quite as hot as it was when we were cycling in Europe. Thank goodness for that! I was kicking myself that I didn't take a camera with me. There would have been some beautiful shots of the water and the trees turning. I'm hoping I can get back there before the week is out with my camera.

Today I stuck pretty close to home. I got some calls made and some things arranged and then I christened my new sharpening system and got the dovetails laid out for the latest box. I haven't cut any since July and I'm a bit nervous about starting them. The last set I made was the best one I've ever done and I'd hate to think that I'd peaked. I'll do some sawing practice before I start in on the actual joinery. I'm very pleased with how quickly I can now sharpen plane irons and how much less mess there is. I never was much for playing in the mud and with the regular water stones each sharpening session was very like playing in the mud. I'd never make a potter. Give me nice dry wood shavings any time.

An autumn walk

We took a walk up on Nose Hill today. It was a perfect temperature, blue sky and great fall colours. I have a new pair of hiking boots and decided to give them a try. I did some city walking in them last week but it was time to get them out on some rougher terrain. We weren't exactly scrambling up mountains, but we were off the path and there were hummocks and muddy bits and rocks to contend with.

My other boots still have a lot of wear left in them but I bought them before I started to run and my feet have expanded a full size since I took up the sport. Even though I haven't run much in the last year my feet didn't magically go back to their former size. Funny thing about that. Also I think I've become accustomed to a certain amount of room in footwear and I'm unwilling to put anything on my feet that doesn't feel roomy enough.

Anyway, here are some of the pictures I shot. It was fun to be out in the fresh air and the sunshine. I can quite happily putter away in my workshop day after day but it doesn't get me outside.

Ta da!

So here's the finished sharpening station. I unwrapped the plates this morning. It may not look like much but it's very satisfying to have taken another step toward the perfect workshop.

Oh the head bone's connected to the...

Today it was like I was in one of those songs that keeps going forever. I intended to get the sharpening station set up and get back to the boxes. Before I could get the sharpening station set up I needed to move the shelf where it will sit. Before I could move the shelf down I had to keep trying to flatten the twisted board, so more shavings.

I did come up with a way that helps me to know where I need to take material off. I've always found it difficult to visualize things upside down. Put the board on a flat surface, see where it rocks and then turn it upside down to plane bits off. That is too much for my little pea-sized brain most days. I found that by visualizing an electric planer with a perfectly flat bed and saying to myself, "If I were to run this over a knife on a perfectly flat surface where would the knife take material first?" That may seem convoluted but it makes better sense to me. I actually got the board quite a bit flatter than it was.

The next problem was that when I took it over to the uprights to which it was to be attached, it still wobbled. It took me a while to figure out that I was checking it on my benchtop which is flat and that the uprights probably weren't. My brain just never quits although it often works in slow motion. I decided that I could probably attach the cleat safely enough without making it perfectly flat or, conversely, making it match the curves in the supports. Now there's a nightmare waiting to pounce.

I got both shelf supports put in and then realized that I had to do something different with the task lamp. The float glass is both wider and longer than the tray I was using to hold my water stones so I couldn't just reattach the lamp holder that I had before. I decided to attach another support rail to the wall and attach a block with a hole drilled in it to that. The lamp stem fits in the hole. Much checking of sizes, drawing of lines and drilling of holes later the lamp holder is in place and it works. Small victory.

The next problem was how to prevent the sharpening stones from sliding off the back of the shelf. The shelf doesn't go all the way to the wall at the back. These stones (glass plates actually) are quite expensive and I certainly don't want them sliding off and going tinkle tinkle on the concrete floor. If I put another bench hook beside the one that holds the float glass I can put stones I'm not using on it and they won't get knocked off the back of the shelf. The bench hook I had before was too wide so I decided to cut it in two. I took the cheap and dirty route when I made it and attached the cleats with two screws for each without glue or pegs. That meant I had to put a couple more screws in so that I wouldn't have waggling cleats when I cut it apart. More screwing. I do use a power drill for the drilling and screwing part of the operation but the cutting was done with a hand saw.

In the meantime, the glue on the float glass bench hook had dried so I took the clamps off and tried it out on the shelf. Perfect! Now it's time to put take the sharpening plates out of their boxes and get those plane irons sharpened up. But wait, this, like my last system uses water for a lubricant and to take away the slurry. Water and guck on raw plywood probably isn't the best idea. Painting. I hate painting. Oh well suck it up Princess and paint.

Unearth the cans of paint left over from the last house reno seven years ago. Some rattle and some slosh. I picked the heaviest slosher and shook it up. Then I had to do some more excavating to find the paint brushes and stir sticks. I eventually found them and stirred up the paint. It was a bit thick but definitely usable. I was quite impressed. As I read the label I discovered that it can be used on metal. Bonus. Now I can paint the lovely tangerine and robin's egg blue cabinets that I want to put my tools in. Hmmm it's supposed to be nice out tomorrow so it would be a good day to haul said cabinets into the garage and paint them. Why do I get the feeling that I may not get back to my boxes tomorrow either? Ah well, when you have a shop, even a tiny one, there are always improvements to be made. I think that's half the fun. Anyway I did get two coats of paint on the plywood bench hook so I should be able to sharpen up the plane irons tomorrow. Just like the jumpin' bones song I'm back to where I started.

The adventure continues.

Bunnies, shavings and dead blackberrys

My woodworking project for today was making a toothpick from a 2X4. At least, that's what it seemed like. The picture above shows some of the shavings that were on the floor at the end of the day. I put a bunch more in a bag to give to people who have fire pits. We have a fire bowl but don't often use ours. When Liz and Leah were here I sent them away with one bag of shavings and now I've accumulated another one. The chunk of apple tree in the first shot is waiting for me to have at it with the bow saw so that Richard can turn it. I got it part way cut one day and then haven't been back to it.

The purpose of all the shavings today was to try to flatten a 2x4 so that I could rebuild my sharpening station. I bought new stones this summer and I need to re engineer the shelf where I keep them because they are bigger than the old ones, or the float glass that they sit on is bigger. Of course, I had to start out with a hunk of wood that looked more like a twisted ski than a 2x4. Oh well, it's all practice. One of these days I'll actually learn how to flatten a board quickly and efficiently with a hand plane. I'm getting to the point where I don't even think of getting out the circular saw. It may take me a bit longer to cut boards to length or width by hand but it's a lot less fuss. The plan is to finish the sharpening station so I can sharpen up all my planes using the new technology and then get back to the boxes.

I didn't make any shavings yesterday because on Tuesday my Blackberry had a major seizure. It kept flicking from the notification light to the screen with the hour glass on it. Richard tried everything they suggested on the web and it just kept going back and forth. The documentation said to take it to a dealer so I did. They sent me to a Rogers store downstairs in the mall. The people there told me that I had to call the help line first. (Sigh) Back home and sit on hold. I made a total of three calls, sat on hold for 30 minutes and did what I was told over and over again until finally they determined that it was, indeed, malfunctioning. I know they have to try everything but I was getting mighty tired of taking the battery out and putting it back in and trying to install software again. So, I'm getting a refurbished one. I hope this one isn't prone to seizures.

Yesterday I caught up with the bunny in the yard. I used a longer lens this time and got some close ups. I was hoping for a few more but a neighbour came out to walk her dog and the bunny took off. At least I got a couple of shots.

My treat for the day was to listen to the rest of an audio book as I ate my breakfast and drank my tea. It was the newest Kathy Reichs and I wanted to know how it ended. It was great not to have to turn off the iPod, go into school and resume the story a number of hours later.

People who come out in the daylight

Yesterday I went for coffee with a friend and then walked back through Glenmore Park in order to take some pictures. It has always been my intention to take a series of fall photographs but year after year that got moved to the bottom of the list as I started into the routine of planning for classes, marking assignments, tracking attendance and calling parents.

I was amazed at how many people are actually out and about during the day. I feel a little like Dracula suddenly out in the sunlight and able to watch the goings on. Of course, the demographic is different. In the cafe there were a number of grey-haired folks; I'll have to append 'like me,' and a few women who were in business dress. There was one young man, probably in high school with an older woman I took to be his mother. I automatically thought, 'dental appointment.' One of the women behind the counter is the owner and I've seen her there every time I've been in. With her was a young woman who looked like she should have been in high school but then, as I get older everyone else looks younger. I swear some of the new teachers and police officers look like they are 12.

When I began my walk through the park I noticed different sorts of people. As in the cafe, there were the greying ones on bikes or on foot. One family, or what I took to be a family, was composed of one older man and three young adults. They did look old enough to be out of school. They were sitting on a bench looking out at the water and speaking in a language I didn't recognize. There were also several people with various handicaps and their caregivers walking slowly along the paths.

As I passed one of the picnic areas 10 women with baby joggers merged onto the path. One woman didn't have a jogger and I gathered that she was the instructor. I have never before been anywhwere where there were more than one or two women with baby joggers.

When Richard came home today he mentioned that there had been a fire drill, another of the things that I won't miss. At time it felt as if I was the only teacher willing (or stupid enough) to walk among the kids during winter fire drills and try to prevent them from smoking or throwing snow balls at each other. I'm glad I'll no longer feel the responsibility to do something about such behaviour when I don't see anyone else doing it.

Another oddity today was being home when the mail truck came by with a package. Usually we get the little slip in the mailbox and the next day we go to the post office to collect whatever it is. It is indeed a weird new world.

Sometimes you do get back

"The Road Not Taken" By Robert Frost has always been an important poem for me. It speaks of the decisions we make every day and how those small decisions can determine the course of our lives. To me, the poem expresses the longing for what can not be once we have chosen a path. The lines don't suggest that you can never go back but the prospect is unlikely.

"And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back"

When I was in high school the things that balanced my difficulty with math were music and art. At one point because I took the road less travelled and took German instead of the usual French which most of my classmates were taking, I was doing my grade 11 music in a grade 12 class and my grade 12 art in a grade 10 class. It's a good thing that both the art and music teachers were flexible and willing to bend the rules a bit for me. In grade 12 I even shared a studio with three other art students. In fact it was a storage room in the basement that was hot and had no natural light. The other students were much better at art than I was but I had my space there probably so I could go my own way without having to spend all of my art period with the grade 10's. :-)

I used to spend my Saturdays listening to the opera and CBC radio and painting, making prints or building model houses. Once my mother allowed me to fill the bathtub with water and float oil based inks on the water so that I could make interesting prints by laying paper on top of the swirling colours and then immediately lift them off. I cleaned up the mess in the bathtub but still, that was very forward-thinking of her.

When I graduated from high school it seemed natural to me to go into Art Education since art had been what I loved to do in high school. I enrolled in the required courses and also enrolled in a drawing course. I wasn't very good at drawing and I knew it so I wanted to take a drawing course in order to improve. As it turned out, that was a bad move. The people in the course could already draw very well and my memory of it is that we didn't receive a lot of instruction on how to draw; we just got told to draw. I remember in one case the instructor assigned us a three-hour drawing of a live model and then went home. Art in university wasn't a happy experience for me and I came out with a D in drawing and a C in the other art course I took. The irony of the situation was that I didn't need the drawing course in order to continue in the teaching route but because I had a D on my record I wasn't allowed to take any more art courses until I retook the course and improved the mark. I thought that was the end of art for me.

Still, there was something about it that attracted me. I ignored that attraction for many years until I was teaching junior high. My teaching partner and I found out that one of the ways to help the kids settle down was to ask them to draw. Two of the other teachers we were working with actually had some experience in teaching people how to draw and introduced me to an alphabet of shapes. I felt as if I was in way over my head so I decided to take a drawing course offered by the local college of art and design through their extension program. There were no grades and I was free to just learn.

In that course I discovered that, while my drawings were not nearly as good as many of the other students', there was no magic to drawing. It required practice and at that time I decided I wanted to spend my time in other ways. Drawing raise its head again for me when I became part of a creative journal project. I realized that I like to draw. It helps me focus and puts me into the zone in the same way that woodworking does. Again, other things intervened but I have always liked drawing materials, coloured pencils, fiber-tipped pens, conte and pencils. I have quite a collection waiting for 'someday.'

Recently, while I was waiting for my husband to finish in the dentist's, I dropped into an art store nearby. There was lots of time so I went through the books and bought several. The one which has really captured my imagination is drawing with your artist's brain: learn to draw what you see - not what you think you see by Carl Purcell. The title made a lot of sense to me because I've read a number of Freeman Patterson's books about photography including Photography and the Art of Seeing. Also, I've always believed that in teaching writing the key is to help students think like writers. Once they've accomplished that step the rest can be taught relatively easily.

The Purcell book is exactly what I need at this point. He breaks down various techniques in ways I haven't seen before and particularly the one which turned on a light bulb for me was to see shapes that you want to draw in terms of short line segments. You only have to concentrate on one line at a time. I'm starting to look at objects with that in mind and suddenly the task of drawing pleasing and recognizable objects seems possible. Now I have another tool to use when I practice and I'm ready to do that practicing. As Rob Cosman, my handtool coach, says about wood working, 'most wood workers use hand tools because they enjoy the process.' I will draw because I enjoy the process.

Sometimes in life you get the opportunity to go back to the 'two roads [that diverge] in a yellow wood,' and take the other one. I'm looking forward to my journey in visual arts and I'm grateful to be back at the fork in the road once again after more than thirty years.

The drawing at the top of this post is one from the Creative Journalling class. We took a photocopy of a photo, cut it in half and then copied the photo on the other side working with it upside down. The drawing above is one that I did over 30 years ago. It is probably a copy of something in a drawing book although, at this point, I don't remember what.

The Little Joys of Retirement

When I turned 45 a friend gave me this mug. It's one of my favourites but I think the title needs changing. If 'the little joys of teaching are without number,' the little joys of retirement certainly are! Last night I stayed up til the wee hours of the morning so I could finish my book. I can't remember the last time I did that. When I went to choir practice last night I wasn't tired and, best of all is being able to wake up in the morning and feel rested. It is soooo much easier to deal with life in general when I get enough sleep. Somehow when I was teaching sleep was always the thing that got short changed.

Yesterday I made muffins and took some over to a friend's place. We had tea and watched the traffic go by. I'm so glad I can drive the roads at times other than in rush hour and that I can ride my bike, take the bus or walk to do a number of errands because time is not as much of an issue. The birds are happier now that I'm home a lot more. Bailey hardly ever whistles for attention. I don't know that I really give them all that much more time than I did when I was working but they hear me tromping around the house and whenever I go into the room I speak to them.

Today the hare was back in the back yard. I don't think this is the same one that hung out here last year. This one seems smaller and it's not here as much. The one last year was here pretty much every day. I got a picture of it all tucked up beside the fire bowl where it likes to rest. Also I saw two squirrels chasing each other around the tree outside my window and then heard one of them jump onto the roof and patter its way across. I didn't manage to get a picture of them. The little joys of retirement are, indeed, without number.

Brunch with the Budgies

I had it all planned out: the first day the kids were in school and I wasn't: I was going to take my camera and go to the zoo to take photos. There would be no kids and it would be a nice celebration of another first in the series that is retirement. When I got up this morning I didn't feel like getting dressed right away so I put on a pair of sweats and read my email. Then the familiar 'shoulds' started to kick in. I should be getting ready if I'm going to the zoo. I'd better have something to eat and get moving. I must remember to put on my sunscreen.

In the middle of one of these thoughts I stopped myself. I don't have to go to the zoo if I don't want to. It's true that weather is beautiful and taking photos would be fun but I feel like nesting today. The nest is quite a mess and I've been out so much lately that I haven't had a chance to clean it up. So I decided to let myself off the hook regarding the zoo. I have an annual pass and it will be there tomorrow.

I realized that this is also what I liked best about teaching, a chunk of time in which I could decide which tasks got done in which order. There certainly were more restrictions in teaching than there are now. I have a few phone calls I want to make and there are a few dust bunnies taunting me from the sidelines but it is quiet and peaceful in the house and I get to decide what I do and when I do it. No bells, no supervision, no marking.


I got my brunch ready and sat down in the dining room with the birds and a book on scroll sawing. I read and munched and talked to the birds. Bailey was quiet and enjoyed the piece of orange I put in her cage. The budgies regarded the piece of orange as some alien life form and stayed away from it. Manx, the more vocal of the two, carried on his usual commentary on life. One of the wonderful things about budgies is that, even at their loudest, they aren't all that loud. The burbles, and peeps and squeaks and whistles never cease to amuse me.

Now, as I sip my tea and do a little 'blogging,' the house is quiet except for the fan in my computer and the ticking of various clocks. That is yet another thing to appreciate. I encouraged talk in my classroom and so it was hardly ever quiet. The halls were always noisy with loud talk, laughter and sometimes screeches of surprise when somebody poked somebody else. Most of the noise was good natured but in the last couple of years I began to find it wearing. I don't think my hearing is as good as it used to be and it becomes more of an effort to filter out the various sounds and to understand what people are saying. So, as I sit here, I am at ease in the relative silence. I may listen to the radio later or put on my iPod and continue the latest novel I'm listening to but, here again, there is no obligation and that is truly a gift.

It is interesting now that I'm away from teaching how I'm starting to be able to articulate some of what I liked about and to appreciate the years I spent in the classroom in a new way. Life is good.