The Back-to-School Blues meet The Green Mountain High

Ahhhhhhh!!!! I'm not ready! I haven't even spent a combined hour on preparation!  I can't remember what a dangling modifier is! I haven't rehearsed my, " I hope your summer was fantastic because this will be the most important academic year of your high school career," speech! I am a complete and utter failure.  In case you were wondering what it is I actually have been doing the last few weeks, I'll tell you.  

Rich and I spent the last 5 days in Stowe, Vermont and it took all of my strength and the promise of purchasing as many growlers of Vermont brewed beer that we could fit in our Scion for the trip home to get him to come back to the tri-state area.  Truth be told, I needed a little convincing myself.  We stayed right smack-dab in the middle of the majestic Green Mountains at the prestigious Stowehof Inn, waking literally every day to a misty, morning view from our balcony.  We visited as many breweries as I could physically stand, rubbed dirty elbows with the locals, saw a little local music and felt utterly at home in our birkenstocks and appreciation of the sweet, mountain air.  I lost count approximately how many times my husband mentioned how much we belonged there and if it weren't for the six month winter season, I would be inclined to agree.   Regretfully, yesterday we made the long trip home, our little car filled to the brim with beer bottles, Vermont cheese wedges from the creamery and maple syrup.  It just might have been the best vacation we've taken yet.  Really. Pictures to come as soon as I dig out my camera from underneath all of the pine needles.

Currently, I'm preparing to meet our realtor for our, oh, I don't know, fourth time we'll bid on a house this summer.  On our vacation we were reminded of how much we relish the opportunity to take off for a bit, see something new.  Our desires for things and what we'd love to see happen in the near future.  Copenhagen, Bel Horizonte, Brazil and Paris were all on the tip of our tongues.  Putting a good deal of work into this album that is slowly but surely taking shape- ahhh exciting!- reaching out to our community, helping out with the cool kids in our church's youth group and the possibility lingering still of either one or both of us returning to school for the spring semester.  All of these things together(including the hovering thought of a little Shannon in the possible near future) lead us to deciding upon the purchase of a house that would both fall well below our budget and afford us the space needed to open up to our friends and family.  We believe we finally found it and are taking the leap (once again) and placing a bid.  From previous experience, we know that God'll squash it if it's not a good idea and we're cool with that.  But, for now, we're so excited that we were saved from buying the house on Montclair so that we were able to evaluate what we needed and wanted for the next few years to come.

See? I have been entirely too busy to even consider constructing parts of speech worksheets.  I believe, in my heart of hearts, my students will thank me for that.

Sleep

It's one of the few things absolutely necessary for survival.  Workers dream about it all day as they tap pencils, quiet children, answer phones, push papers.  Commuters try and catch it on the train.  Babies don't mess around and just do it all day long.  There are no tutorials.  No instruction manuals.  No group sessions for sleeping, you're just expected to know how to do it.  Which, often makes me feel like the one tourist that's always 30 feet behind everyone else on the group tour of the same section of the same city for the 5th day in a row.  I should know my way around by now- and also to wear more adequate walking shoes- but I just, sigh, don't.

I've found that this life-long tango with insomnia is like a hot poker for advice-givers.  I've listened politely to instructions on warm milk, hot baths, lavender scented oils, exercise in the morning, exercise in the afternoon, and the list goes on.  I assure you, I have tried them all- sometimes all at once-to no avail.  I am still awake typing a blog post at 5:45 in the morning, when most people should be waking up from a full night's sleep.

I am not nervous, restless, pre-occupied, caffeinated, or consumed.  Just, sleepless  and left wondering if there is even a remote chance of this condition rectifying itself.  Have you ever tried to run after applying lavender oils, warm milk in hand? There must be a better way.

Rootless

IMG_0641, originally uploaded by jshannon331.

I dream of what Venice looks like in springtime. I imagine what real greek yogurt would taste like. I wonder if I have a big enough handle on portuguese to get by in Lisbon. My heart stirs at the thought of Paris at nighttime. I had thought all of these things would magically disappear as soon I got married to be replaced by more acceptable dreams of owning a home and starting a family. And, I suppose, they did. It was just, then I began dreaming of homes in far-away places and traveling with our children. Rich and I began traveling together and found ourselves planning our next adventure before we finished the one we were in. We pour over pictures (this one in particular from Scotland), relive experiences, laugh about the people we've met and the places we stayed. A modified-version of the original.

At first, I had thought that this was indicative of rootless behavior exhibited by the two of us. What is wrong with us? Why can't our hearts just be settled where we are? Is it unhealthy to make plans to put down roots when parts of us are pulling up from the ground?

I don't think this is an uncommon occurrence. Particularly with the steps we've made in order to purchase a home recently, I think it's only natural to reassess the place we've found ourselves in and what we're called to do.

We were called to be here, in New Jersey, for now. We know this because, this is where we are. Our hearts are connected to the community and to our families that live here. So, we will put our roots down here for now. We will invest where we are, with everything we have, for now. We are learning what it means to be present, to fulfill mandates and to trust. This doesn't mean to neglect the parts of us that long for something new. For all that we've learned about roots, we also know that they can cover more ground than meets the eye. It's so very simple, we just over-looked it.

Summertime

Yes. It's here again. The calendar mocks me, I start getting mail addressed to Mrs. Shannon, I wake at 3 a.m. with the pressure of coming up with an innovative grammar lesson racing through my restless mind. Every year when this time comes around again, I swear to myself that it will be different. That I won't lose any more sleep fraught with anxiety about hearing an alarm that has three more weeks before signifying my march to the classroom.

It has been the craziest summer in the history of summers. For us, anyway. We moved into my mom's house at the beginning of the summer, thinking we would be scraping wallpaper and arguing about master bedroom colors with culinary names- butterscotch or maple sugar?- by now. We thought we would perhaps have ironed out a plan for both or at least one of us, to either continue our educations or jump ship and change careers. I thought we would have come to an agreement about when to start a family. If , up until this summer, my life hasn't been a testament to the fact that nothing goes according to your plan, there's no mistaking it now.

As it stands right now, I am squinting at the keyboard as I'm typing, considering it is perpetually dark in this dungeon of a basement without a prospect of a new living situation in sight. I am ordering new posters to adorn the classroom walls I half-heartedly wish to return to. I never took the GRE's as I was supposed to, in order to be prepared to apply to grad schools by their deadlines in November for the spring semester and am currently childless- which, I have to say from my humorous living quarters, perhaps isn't the worst thing for now. Or it is. I sincerely, officially, have no idea.

Through all the uncertainly, I was blessed with glimmers of hope in the last few months that I am going to hold onto- both literally and figuratively. I just returned from a trip to Nashville that seemed to stoke a dying ember. I went longing to discover if music was something I could put on my hobby list and get on with my real, normal life. Seems I never did like normalcy. Or reality. Going so close to returning to work was a toss-up- it had two effects:it made me want to walk away forever and throw myself into this project that has consumed me- and give it one last go, to make sure my kids know how important it is to follow who God created them to be. I took some sweet Portuguese lessons from a lovely friend, I am close to finishing my goal of 30 pages in one of the two manuscripts I've been working on, I learned how to make a three-tiered birthday cake, a raspberry tart and that strawberries freshly picked at the farmer's market don't need any help. I learned that I actually like fire-works, and enjoy the beach- not just fake it because Rich loves it. I learned that my sister and I lived through more than I give ourselves credit for, or take into consideration and that in and of itself is a reason to praise our God every day.

Summertime is supposed to be a restful time full of peace. Parts of it were, parts of it weren't. I think I'm thankful for both.