My good intentions with regard to blogging more have, once again, fallen by the wayside.  During the school year I'm too stressed to blog and during the summer I'm too relaxed to blog.  Still, I really want to make the effort.  I think I need to make this less about my frustrations with BCPSS and more about my urban existence.  That may make it less emotionally charged and, therefore, more appealing to me.

For many years I've wanted to move back to bucolic upstate NY.  First I wanted to be closer to my mother, but she died last year.  Then I wanted to be closer to by best friend, but she died this year.  Perhaps I should look into moving near Rush Limbaugh...  Anyway, I have made up my mind to stay in Baltimore for a little longer.  I even did something that may be insane.  I put a contract on a house in Reservoir Hill!  I'll be trading 576sf in Pigtown for 3600sf in Res. Hill.  I'd rather the house be here in Pigtown, but houses that size are scarce down here and come with a price tag that is beyond this teacher's limit.  It's a short sale, so it isn't fully ratified and won't be for about 2-3 months.  The settlement date has been set for mid-December.  I don't think it will hit me until it's fully ratified, so I'm kind of in denial right now.  That hasn't kept me from uploading photos to Sherwin Williams' site and trying on colors, though.  I've been purging my personal papers for the past year, so not much to do there.  Since I'll have so much more room I won't need to get rid of much, but I do have a lot of things I don't need to be toting to my new house.  It would make sense for me to start getting rid of those things while I have the summer off, but as I said, it's not quite real for me yet.  Maybe I'll go down in the basement and get some of my old cans of paint and any toxic chemicals I might have and take them to the city's drop off place tomorrow.  Yeah, I can manage that.