Life Lately June 2025

For me, June is always a time of transition with the school year ending and summer beginning! There's always a lot of packing going on - packing up classrooms and offices for summer cleaning and also packing suitcases for summer fun!

Other than our trip to Disneyland, it was a pretty quiet month. We got to babysit my canine nephew, Max, for a week and it was so great having him at our house! He's almost 16 years old, so he and Avalanche made a pretty content pair of old guys lazing about! He is the sweetest dog and we are so lucky that he's been part of our family for so long. It's always amusing to us that we forever thought of Max as a big dog, because compared to all of our miniature Dachshunds, he was! However, from the first moment we introduced Avalanche to Max, it became abundantly clear that Max was not a big dog - and that was back when we first adopted Avalanche and he only weighed 53 pounds. Now that he's 73 pounds, Max really seems like a small dog!

just look at this handsome frosty face!

BFFs

how foolish we were to think
for all those years that
Max was a big dog!

even though he was built for freezing cold temperatures,
he loves to nap outside when it's over 100 degrees!
#idontgetit

I don't get to see these lovelies nearly often enough,
but when I do, we have the best time!

one of my best friends treated me to a super
fun whiskey tasting at a local distillery
for my birthday

two more amazing friends that I also
don't get to see nearly often enough!

my car is ancient and I love it so much,
but the air conditioning no longer works (and I am not
paying to replace it in an almost 18 year old car!),
so once it got hot, I was driving C's car to work

on one of the hottest days of the year,
his car got a flat tire (I was parked in the school lot)

AAA to the rescue!

These next few pictures tell the story of how terrified Avalanche is of thunder. We had a really bad storm, so we put his dog bed in our closet (he likes to go in there or into the laundry room whenever there's thunder) and I sat with him (C was on a work call). He was so scared that he actually let me rest my head on him for a long time - which is not something he has ever tolerated! But as the storm got worse, he grew more anxious and eventually just climbed in under C's clothes to hide! It was pitiful and adorable and heartbreaking all at once! He was absolutely fine after the storm ended, but that was a long couple of hours for him!

I'm sitting on his dog bed and he's sitting on the floor
LOL

it was almost impossible to get a decent pic
of me resting my head on him,
but it happened!

hiding under C's clothes

peeking out to check I hadn't left him

what a worried face!

As the school year ends, there is one little celebration...for the first time in my teaching career, I didn't get sick! Of course there were days when I had a headache, allergies, or a bit of a scratchy throat, but I didn't catch anything that took me out for several days, which has always happened at least once a year!

Speaking of health, we just finished this Typhoid vaccine this morning to prep for our trip. The list of vaccinations we have is pretty extensive: Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Tetanus, MMR, Yellow Fever, Flu, Pneumonia, Shingles, COVID, and now Typhoid. We start the anti-Malaria medication this coming Saturday and will be taking that for 20 days. Thank you, Science!

We're currently at the airport waiting for our flight to get our summer trip underway after driving up to Canada to drop Avalanche off for summer camp with C's parents. We've been eagerly anticipating this trip, which has been planned since February 2024, and are so excited it's finally here!

Happy Tails to you!

Not "Leaving" it on the Table

Yesterday was my last day of work for the 2024-2025 school year and I was tying up some loose ends, including looking at my year-end leave balances.

I've written about how strongly I feel about using my leave on a few different occasions (most notably in two particular posts, No More Unused Leave and Personal Days, both in 2021).

When I was a classroom teacher, I used to get ten sick days and three personal days (two of which could be carried over to the following school year if left unused), but my leave allowances are now a little different. I have a longer contract in my current coaching position, which means I get eleven sick days per school year because of the extra days I now work. Additionally, thanks to my union working hard and negotiating on our behalf, all teachers now get five personal days per school year (which convert to sick leave at the end of the year if left unused). With the length of our contract day being seven hours, this means that I now get 77 hours of sick leave per year and 35 hours of personal leave per year.

Are you familiar with the concept of "Die with Zero" attributed to Bill Perkins? At its core, it's the idea that you should focus on using your resources to live a rich life (however you personally define that) rather than focus on accumulation and dying with a sizable amount of unspent wealth. This seems to be a particularly applicable philosophy when thinking about how important I believe it is to use my sick and personal leave!

I say that knowing that I am eyeing retirement in a few short years, while teachers with many years left in their careers are in a different stage of life than I am and may not be in a position to use all of their leave each year.

I also say that while simultaneously acknowledging that I don't have children who might get sick, potentially requiring me to take extended time off to care for them (although this type of concern was always in the forefront of my mind during the years my mom was very sick and I was extremely conservative with my leave during those years).

But for me, with only a few years left in my public education career? I have absolutely no interest in accumulating any leave because I know first hand just how little it will be worth if I don't use it and instead "cash it out."

Conversely, the leave holds incredible value to me in terms of using it throughout the school year for appointments and for when I don't feel well. The privilege of being able to stay home when I'm under the weather is priceless. The privilege of knowing I will still get a full paycheck even if I have to miss work is one I don't take for granted.

But I am no longer focused on accumulating leave the way I was early in my career. I will NOT be burned again like I was back in 2012 (please see those other posts for details)!

As I've written about previously, teachers are often made to feel guilty for using their leave; I will not be made to feel any kind of way other than super savvy for not being taken advantage of! This leave is "sold" to us as a benefit and I'm going to use that benefit the same way I use the ride share, restaurant, or travel benefits that come with my credit cards.

I do have a reasonable balance of unused sick leave that I'm keeping for any unpredictable "just in case" scenarios, but my goal at the beginning of this school year was to not accumulate any additional leave starting in July 2024 through the remainder of my career, so I am extremely pleased with myself in terms of the leave I used this year!

I used all 35 hours of
personal leave this year!

I used all of this year's
77 hours of sick leave
in addition to 5 hours
I had banked from
previous years!

As far as I'm concerned, leave is meant to be used and I plan to continue not accumulating any additional hours for the remainder of my career, opting instead for the "earn and burn" approach that has served me so well this year!

Happy Tails to you!