Yesterday I introduced the main speaker at graduation, formally presented the class to the school board to close the ceremony, hauled one last load to my car, turn in my keys and paperwork to Mike, then drove away from Platte Canyon for the last time, at least as a teacher there.

The ceremony went smoothly and the weather was almost perfect. It got a little toasty sitting under the sun in all black, but I had brought a defense mechanism:

I didn’t wear it until after the formalities concluded, but it definitely helped keep the sun off while I did the obligatory shaking of hands. Plus, the fake dove on top weighed it down enough that it didn’t blow off in the inevitable Bailey wind.

When I got home around 4 I ate lunch and then promptly fell asleep on my couch. I think the past few weeks were a bit more emotionally exhausting than I had realized. I had been taking home carloads every day after school for two weeks. My garage is currently full of classroom stuff, about 70% of which are books and 15% are costumes and swords, and I have another half dozen boxes in my living room. My parents came up last weekend and we also emptied out the Bailey pad to get it ready for market, so another dozen or so boxes also came home from that.

Tuesday I’ll make at least one trip to my new school to start moving things into my new classroom. I was going to do more, but somehow the day became filled with meetings ‘since I’ll be there anyway….’

I have some more details to settle for the New York trip, some paperwork to finish up, and I’ll be cramming in some graduate credits this summer as well. Between that and needing to find a place for all of this stuff, I’ll be keeping busy on this vacation.

I have plenty of things to work through for this change, but it’s a good thing. I know this was the right decision although it was and is a hard one. I got to work with some really great people at Platte, and there were a lot of really great things about the job.

Having a few more tasks to do and the NY trip still to come means that this chapter in my life isn’t fully finished yet, but driving down the mountain yesterday certainly made it real.