Retirement bliss

As a kid, living in Lynnhaven, Princess Anne County, now part of Virginia Beach, I used to dread the Sunday at the end of the first full week of August as it marked the end of our family's week at Shrine Mont and signalled that the summer was drawing to a close and school was soon to resume.

Six years ago, we moved to the mountains and found out that the schools here begin much earlier, mid August as opposed to the Tuesday after Labor Day that I was accustomed to in Virginia Beach.  As a teacher and then a school counselor, we returned a couple of weeks prior to the kids and that was true here in the western part of the state as well, thus returning the adults to school during the first week of August, while my family was at Shrine Mont.  After my first summer here, as I was in a 12 month job, I took a few days vacation time and went with them to return to the back to school chaos that only an educator can understand.

Tomorrow the students will return to school locally, but since we have had several consecutive mild winters, they may be losing their early start waiver from the state and will have to start after Labor Day next year.  If I was still working, I would have been back for two weeks, trying to fix broken schedules, registering new students, listening to student and parent pleas for a different teacher or different order  of classes, helping with or planning Back to School Night activities.  I didn't even think about these things this year until a friend told me that Back to School Night was last week and another that she was back at work without us getting together this summer.

Do I miss it?  I can honestly say that I do not.  I have retired, twice.  The first time was as soon as I had obtained the magic combination of age and years working that the retirement system for the state mandates.  I was burned out from SOLs, the State mandated testing, can you believe they name them with something that produced that acronym?  As hubby was self employed, I was covering the family's insurance and that was a good portion of my retirement, so I went to work, part time for an educational non-profit to keep us insured. After we started our home in the mountains, I went back into education as the department chair of the School Counseling office of a local high school to pay back into the retirement system for a few more years.  When hubby finally retired, I followed a few months later and though I do miss some of the people, I don't miss the headaches of school opening days, standardized testing, student registration for the next year and school closing days.  I am blissfully happy to still be at home, enjoying my hubby, the pups, and the garden.