Transitions...

The past year has been a pretty calm, quiet one for me. No major drama. Life on an even keel. It's been a good year. Considering how rocky and crazy things had been in the handful of years preceding it, this past year was a welcome respite into -- dare I say it? -- "normal." I've felt like I've been able to catch my breath.

Now, though, I'm seeing signs...things are changing again. I'm not averse to change really...it is part of life, after all, and is better than the alternatives of either stagnation or death. I just wish change could work so that it evens itself out and doesn't show up all at once.

In the foreseeable future, our school year will be ending (always a welcome time of year for kids and mom alike), my job will be ending (sad, but nothing I can do about it), and my daughter-in-law and grandson will be moving out of state to join my son wherever he is assigned (I've still not fully grasped the implications of that one). So, this means I will no longer be responsible for teaching (for a couple months, anyway), for selling yarn or for babysitting. When I write it like that, it doesn't sound as big a deal as it feels, but...it is a big deal. Any one of those things is an important thing in my life, and each will be an adjustment in itself, but all three together? I don't know. I'm hopeful that I'll weather the transitions gracefully and not have to go through some incredibly annoying (to us all) emotional binge that makes me not a fun person to be around.

On the other side of things, it looks like we may really be renovating our kitchen this year. I'm reluctant to say that out loud (or type it for all to see) because we've talked about this for years...we've gone to the stores and looked at flooring and cabinets...we've read literature...and then we've done nothing. It's an expensive proposition, to be sure, one that we desperately need to bite the bullet and undertake eventually (she says, envisioning with a shudder her current 70s-era dark laminate cabinets that are falling apart and that "retro" rust and mustard linoleum that just doesn't come clean no matter what you do to it). So, here we are again...talking and looking and reading...and hopefully we'll get beyond those steps and actually start the demolition process (because once you create holes in walls and tear up flooring, it's pretty hard to change your mind).