Dating and Contemplating

Tonight David and I are going to accompany my friend and colleague, MB and her husband S to the Fox theatre in Atlanta to see SPINAL TAP–UNWIGGED AND UNPLUGGED.  It is a welcome occasion for David and I to be in the company of adults that are comparable in age and temprament—and have fun.  We call all our our “childless” outings “dates” even if it is just a run to the grocery or Lowe’s.  Tonight, however, I think qualifies as a bona-fide DATE and we are both excited and happy to be going out.

I suppose the entire SPINAL TAP thing dates me as I remember the movie when it came out, although I don’t think I actually saw it until I was older.  I’ve become a huge fan of Christopher Guest and his compatriots—-always droll and funny and a bit obtuse, just like “real life”.

I am a week away from being done with my contractual obligations at work, as our contracts go from Aug 15-May 15 each year.  There will be the odd couple of times that I will need to go in for a meeting or to pick up a book I’ve requested, but I have tried to be steadfast in my committment to “taking the summer off”.  My boundaries about this have been tested recently with an administrative refusal to pay a stipend that I thought was due me for extra work that I have done for the university.  I am naieve, I admit, because as I have said before, I always expect people to do the right thing and when they don’t, I am ALWAYS surprised.  I can’t say I was surprised about this, but that is another matter having to do with intuition and history.  At any rate, I won’t do any more work in this vein without some sort of contract or written agreement.  Lesson learned.

So what will I do with my mountains of free-time this summer??????  I have a stack of books to read, I have several things cut out for the girls and I that I need to construct/sew, I’ll go to the beach, I’ll go to the pool, I’ll take yoga classes twice a week, I’ll have a massage.  Mainly, I will have dates with myself, my husband and my daughters—–oh, and the beach and the H’s and the J-N’s visit from NZ and hopefully lots of lounging and relaxing with friends and family.  Relaxing–a very nice concept.