Returning to "Normal"

Wow.

It has been a while since I have written anything on this blog - mainly because I have been in the middle of surgery, recovery, and trying my best to get back into something resembling normalcy. I have had good news - the medical issue that has been plaguing me has now been resolved. I have a new specialist to see next week, but that will probably be a formality rather than a continuing relationship.

I am now sitting at home, recovering from having my gut cut up, rearranged, and put back together again. My surgeon has dictated (with my mother's support) that I will not be returning to work until the start of the new school year. So, I am sitting at home instead of being at the extended school year session at work. 

I went to shop yesterday to get my steps in, and halfway around the store, I felt the exhaustion set in. I leaned on the shopping cart for the rest of the walk and then returned to my home. I am tired today, and my body is not really doing all the things that it should be doing right now.

In addition to the surgery aftereffects, I also broke out in a rash. I am itchy, tired, crabby, hurting (but just a little bit), navigating a reinvented intestinal system, and finding boredom in my enforced time away from work. I am getting ideas for things to do and create, but I am also not doing anything active towards the creation of those things. I am just thinking and thinking and writing things down. 

It is not easy for me to be away from work. As much as I complain and want to have time off, not being able to work at this point is more frustrating than anything else. I was not intending to take off most of my time off in the first month of the contract year. I will have gone through 2/3 of my paid time off from the district at the end of this month which means having to go to work when I don't feel well for the rest of the year. That is what happens when you have some strange medical issues going on that have to be addressed - the sick time evaporates. That's what happened the first time I had to have a bowel resection - my sick time was all used up, and I have never recuperated my sick time surplus from that first surgery 12 years ago.

Enough whining.

My alarm light has just turned itself off. I have about 30 minutes before I can head out into my self-appointed walking task for the day. I received a gift card to Michaels from a family friend, so I am going to head to the store to walk and shop. I have to keep walking to help build up my strength and to get back to my usual energy level before I head back to work on August 7th. I need to be able to keep up with clients at that point. Yesterday's trip around the store demonstrated that I am not up to that job right now, but I need to get back to that level.

It is time to get going into this day. I need to get dressed and get moving. Once I am done moving around, I will feel justified in getting back into bed and sleeping some more. My sister is getting ready to get an old teacher friend and my mom to help with her new classroom theme. She's one of those types of teachers that decorates everything with the same theme. This year's theme is a secret one to all except those of us in the inner circle. She is hoping to get some decorations finished and then to occupy my mom and the friend by having them label all the classroom materials into specific sets. Every student has a number in my sister's classroom. They have pencil boxes, pencils, crayons, cubbies, and textbooks that have their numbers on them. This system allows my sister to keep track of materials as well as her kids. I like systems, and this would be one I would want to use if I were in the classroom.

This is the time of year where I feel like being a classroom teacher. I watch classroom organization videos and think about what I would do if my clients were not the types of clients that I have. I can't have pretty seating options or cutesy themes on the walls because my clients rip them to shreds. One day, I will have an office area where I can indulge my urges to decorate and keep things looking coordinated and themed. For the moment, I use my painted walls as my theme. It is difficult to rip up the paintings, so that is my theme to my music therapy room. The paintings were designed by the art therapist at the facility, so they are creative, colorful, and varied.

I have always thought that, if I hadn't found my chosen profession of music therapy, that I would have ended up being a middle-school special educator. I don't think I would have been able to escape education or working with persons with exceptionalities for long. Perhaps the twinges that I feel this time of year are just my alter existences spurring me towards what they want or need in their universes.

Regardless, I am not a special educator with a class of students, I am a music therapist in a special education environment. I get to work with everyone that arrives at our facility. In the five weeks that I will have missed soon, I may not have as many old faces waiting for me as I anticipate. There is lots of turnover of clientele at my job, so I will be starting from scratch with everyone.

That's the way life goes, I guess. Time to get dressed and get to walking around in someone else's air conditioning. I wonder what I will find at the store today...

See you tomorrow? That's anyone's guess at this point...