frenetic thoughts on this, my first official day of summer: a bulleted list

• so i finished my 7th year of teaching on thursday.  it should have been my 8th, but i took my little detour in 04-05, so i'm behind now.  all in all, it was a pretty good year . . . i love how i always say that in may, but if you had talked to me in february i would have sworn to you that i hated my job and everything involved with it.  but now that the year is done, i'm like, okay.  yeah.  i can totally do this forever.  (totally not saying i will, but that's always how i feel at the end of school.  weird.)
• speaking of 'forever' - i retired my second principal this year.  i've worked in three different school systems and have been really blessed in two of them to be led by people like mr. a and mrs. c., two of the most caring and compassionate individuals i have EVER known.  in both cases, they each worked in public schools for over thirty years.  i can't even fathom that . . . i'm hoping i make it to 10 before i follow another adventure somewhere else. 
• speaking of somewhere else - as a lot of you know, i was kind of looking to move to a different school next year.  two very unique possibilities popped up at about the same time, so i thought i would explore them.  as i told my principal, me looking into moving had absolutely nothing to do with my school now.  i actually am very content where i am. (stop laughing.  really.  i found out it's possible for me to achieve!)  but, i just felt like neither of these two possibilities were things i could ignore (one was teaching with melissa at her school and another was moving up to a high school in oklahoma to work with joy - both are things i would love to do at some point), so i dove right in.  for the last couple of months, my whole prayer has been for God to make it very clear to me where i need to be next year and that i would go there.  (sometimes my selfishness gets in the way and i don't really pay attention to that kind of "stuff," thus the request for clarity.)  i suppose you can't get much clearer than not hearing back from either option, can you?  God cracks me up sometimes.  so.  i'm sticking around for at least one more year and i am good with that.  from what i can tell, next year's bunch of incoming 8th graders will probably lead to a lot more prayerful conversations, though . . .
• my thoughts are actually much more organized - and WAY longer - than i thought they would be when i sat down to write . . . maybe i should change the title of this blog?  it's not really turning out to be frenetic.  but dude.  i love that word.
• so every summer, i make a list of resolutions.  i'm MUCH better at sticking to these than i am to anything i come up with in january.  the two i'm most excited about are de-branding my bathroom (trust me, more on this to come) and hanging out at a coffee shop or the library at least 4 afternoons a week to actually WRITE.  i've decided i am going to have to leave my house to avoid distractions, so i can actually accomplish something.  
• my complex better figure out the pH balance at the pool this summer . . . my skin STILL smells like chlorine from earlier today and it has been scrubbed and polished since then.