Retirement

 I went to Norton High for the last time as a math teacher on Thursday June 17, 2021. Then on Friday June 18th I celebrated my retirement with my friends and family. Huge thank you to my retirement party committee that planned a fantastic celebration with a Disney theme.

Since I am no longer teaching, I will be changing this blog to another called What's on you mind.  I will also be blogging about my vacations and day trips as I plan to do a lot of that during retirement as long as my health will let me.

That blog is Traveling with retired math teacher. I will continue to update Mary's weather blog as well.

Let the countdown Begin

 

Time for me to start counting down the days left to teach. A friend gave me this countdown calendar for my desk that started with 60 days. I will love ripping off one each day. Each day having a different saying.

I have waited so long for this and it's crazy that retirement is so close. I am really looking forward to NOT waking up to an alarm clock every day.

In addition to the calendar I am also doing a countdown chain in the hallway

Each morning I take off one link. The chain has two purposes. One to countdown the days and it adds some color to this plain dull hallway

#Retirement2021  Can't come soon enough

Vaccine Dose 1

I am feeling so much better these days - I got my first shot of the Moderna vaccine. Now I wait 4 weeks to get the second one then 2 weeks after that I am safe to go out in public feeling much more relaxed.

When I am fully vaccinated the first thing I am going to do is visit family and friends and give them a HUG. Then I am going to go out to eat. I just haven't felt safe eating indoors but I will in late April.

I hope everyone else feels safe getting the vaccine. I am so ready for this world to go back to the way it used to be. 

I miss everyone.

School Vacation week

 

A break from school work is always nice. Usually I spend my school vacations catching up on school work but not this past week. I had a nice relaxing time (for the most part) I only did school work for 6 hours on Saturday and 4 hours today (Sunday). I caught up on my shows that were on the DVR and I did some reading. I love when a book can actually make me laugh out loud. Laughter is a good thing and I need more of that in my daily life.

My vacation wasn't totally stress free. Thursday I spent over 8 hours in front of the computer trying to get an appointment for my Covid vaccine, but thanks to the awful way the state runs it's website, I had no luck. First the website kept crashing then when it worked I would find a place with 89 appointments available and I would click  to start filling out the 6 pages of questions but never got past the 4th page before getting the message "No appointments available" as other people already filled up the spaces. The website should hold your place once you click on "schedule appointment" . I suppose there wouldn't be so many people trying to make an appointment if our Governor didn't say "You don't need proof of medical condition, we are using the honor system" BIG mistake!!! so now people like me with 5 risk factors can't get a vaccine but perfectly healthy, but not honest, people can get a vaccine. Oh well, I will try again next week. Some day this year I may actually get a vaccine.

Tomorrow I return to school to complete the last 77 days - I can't believe after 35 years of teaching I only have 77 days left. WOW. I just hope I can keep it together and do what I need to do for my students. I already have what my seniors call "senioritis"

Now time to relax in front of the TV to watch some sports. Nascar race at 3:00, Celtics basketball at 3:30 and then Bruins hockey at 7:00

I love my students

Wednesday January 13th was an important day for me. I had my first cancer treatment. I was given a long list of possible side effects and I am happy to report that I got very few of those side effects and they were minimal. I took two days off of school, one for my day at Dana Farber and the other for my side effects. This was my first treatment so my doctor suggested I take a day off to see how the medicine got to me. I am happy I did take the day and I am sure I will do that every month as I get the treatments once per month.

When I returned to school on Friday I found this sign hanging on the wall outside my office. Made me cry! I have the best students! I plan to leave this sign up for the rest of the year. Thank you so much for showing me the love. 

It is gestures like this that make me love working in Norton. I will miss being with the kiddos every day but I am still going to retire this year.

Only 96 more school days until retirement!

#Retirement2021

 

Reflecting on the good times in 2020

 

Happy New Year!

I know that many people say thank goodness that the year 2020 is over, but even though the year was terrible with the pandemic, there were some good things that happened as well, so we need to try to remember all the positive memories from the year.  There were still things we could do.

My daughter and I got to spend a lot of time together since we are both teachers and schools were not open. Every day we played cards (Rummy) and I am happy to report that I won several games. 

My back yard got a make over which was desperately needed since we took out the pool. There was plenty of time to plant grass, bushes, and flowers. My daughter also had time to make and paint some new birdhouses.

My family (children, sisters, brothers, nephews, nieces) all got together vis zoom every Tuesday. We played trivia with Kahoot. Each week a different person made the kahoot. Those were fun nights.

I love my day trips and I did find some that could be done during this pandemic. Every July I head to Yarmouth to find all the sand sculptures. Usually there are 40-45 sand sculptures but this year there were only 17. That was okay with me, I was just thankful that there was an attraction to head to the cape for.

Then in October the town of Chester, NH kept it's tradition of scare crows all around town. My daughter and I spend the day driving around that town trying to find the hundreds of scare crows.

This is a tradition that we started last year. I want to thank my hairdresser, Darlene, for telling me about Chester, NH.

In November I took a 3-day weekend to get away to the cape. I had a hotel room with an ocean view and I woke up at 5am each morning to watch the sunrise. That weekend away was much needed time away from school work and to try to relax and just forget about the troubling times. It was just what I needed. and the view was gorgeous. This picture was taken from my hotel balcony.

So the year 2020 may not have been the best of my life but I do have a lot of fond memories. I hope you do too.

Welcome 2021 - lets hope I have a lot more positives this year.