It's quite exciting actually. There are two openings in a school just twenty minutes from home, which would just be a dream come true! That's eighty extra minutes a day (compared to my hour commutes to student teaching) which makes a big difference when you never seem to have enough time or sleep.
One part of this process is finding out about all the interesting schools there are around here. In a tiny town 40 miles south, they have a charter school with fewer than ten students. The focus is on an integrated curriculum designed around a "land ethic"--environmental science, prairie restoration, water quality, etc. There's only one teacher; they're hiring for a second teacher. Sounds interesting...
...although I can't totally suppress the thought that this kind of charter school sounds suspiciously like just another way to get rich white kids away from the rest of the students so they can maintain their privileged status... but maybe I'm just paranoid.
Since my return from Nicaragua Loopy and I have both been feeling more like ourselves. Loopy is benefiting a lot from hanging out in Chicago with people who are more similar to her in background, worldview, values, etc. I think maybe she didn't quite realize the full impact of the alienating academic environment, until the weight of it was lightened a bit... it makes me happy to see her feeling more at home.
Meanwhile for me, travel in other countries always "brings me to my senses" in multiple ways. It makes me feel competent and capable, and wakes me up because everything is new and different and interesting. I came back feeling much more energized and have had no problem working hard on the job search stuff.
As for the marriage, both of us feeling more like ourselves has done very good things for how we are together. It seems easy to keep on being the grown-up, responsible, capable person I remembered I was while traveling. It seems easy to let go of the weird little obsessions and routines that I felt all tangled up in before, which came between us and kept us angry and resentful.
It's wonderful and surprising. It's almost like when we were first falling in love, except without the anxiety and insecurity and all the scary unknown territory, i.e., better.
We have been joking that our bodies were temporarily inhabited by strange alien beings ("who were those people???"), but we sent them back to their spaceship.
Tonight I'm on my own at home, and Loopy's in Chicago; I took the bus back today to get some things accomplished around here. I'm heading back down on Friday because Nadine, Chip & Alexa will be in town this weekend for Kate L's wedding, yay!
Anyway, I drove out tonight to take out the garbage and pick up some beer and Diet Dr. Pepper, and across the cornfields I saw the newest moon I ever remember seeing... just the tiniest sliveriest sliver, with really long "horns," as though you could almost see most of the circle. I seem to remember my mother telling me that this is known as "the old moon in the new moon's arms."
It was beautiful, strange, and strikingly red.
I couldn't decide if it was eerie or enchanting—sort of an odd combo of both, really. When I got home I googled "red moon" to see if there were some kind of folk wisdom about what a new, red moon might mean, but they only talked about the moon being red during eclipses. Who knows... but if I look to my life instead of to omens in the sky, I would say that things are definitely getting better.
Photo copyright R.J. Lautner; visit his website full of absolutely amazing photographs and buy some because I feel guilty for stealing this one (even though only about eight people, tops, will ever see it here, I promise, Mr. Lautner).
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