7:40 AM

First day of school.

And I am not pulling into the parking lot.



I'm in my house clothes.  Too-big pink Mickey lounging pants and a too-big pink Disneyland tee-shirt.  And one white sock.

For twenty-five years I've had the same back-to-school nightmare about two weeks before the school year starts.  There is classroom flotsam on every desk and the students are coming in.  I am not ready.

I didn't have that nightmare this year.  A new one showed up in my sleep last night.  Much worse.

I show up to sub (I'll be eligible in January and am seriously considering it) but I know nobody.  The whole school is redesigned and reconstructed and I can't find my way around.  Classes are held in double classrooms, but there are three classes worth of students squeezed in with one "master teacher" and three subs.  We are all shouting over each other trying to be heard.

I have reset my alarm at home.  Instead of 5:30 am, it now plays music at 7:00 and then again at 7:30.  I have no intention of sleeping away the best gardening time in a summer morning.  But today I was grateful to the seagull who woke me out of that dream at 6:00.

It's going to be a good day.  As soon as I feel like it, I'm taking myself up the coast on this First Day of School (and, actually, First Day of Retirement.)  Stopping at Costco for vacation prints and gas.  Up the highway to Carpenteria to spend a retirement gift certificate from a colleague at a favorite quilt fabric shop.  Out to Stearns Wharf to check out the shops, then take an hour cruise of the Channel.  Ola's for dinner on the way home.

A friend suggested I go to my happy place today.  And I am.