On Friday, I packed up my desk, gave several hugs, and completed my student teaching. The night before, I sat through the final meeting of the final course for my Masters program. That's right, folks. I'm done. Two academic years of tedious classes have finally paid off; I am a highly qualified elementary educator. Hell yeah.

Now for the rest of my life.

In exactly two weeks and four days, I will begin my visitor period at Twin Oaks. I plan to apply for membership and will hopefully be joining the community this summer or fall. I'm pretty pumped about it. Unfortunately, major life transitions aren't all sunshine and butterflies. I'm currently in the midst of packing up all of my belongings. Everything will be in a storage unit until I can move in. That means making lots of decisions about what I'll need for the last couple weeks in town, during my visitor period, and during my pre-membership adventures, and what I'll put away for another day. I've been feeling sort of swamped by my possessions.

Also, my cats. My two wonderful cats. Twin Oaks has a limit on pets. There is a long, long waiting list on cats whose owners want to bring them into the community. I will not be adding my cats to that list for a number of reasons. And so, they are in need of a new home. I've been making inquiries for the past few weeks to no avail. No one seems to want the two best cats in the world. I shot an email off to the foster homes coordinator for Homeward Trails, the rescue group I got them from in the first place. When I adopted them, I agreed to return them to HT if I ever needed to surrender them. And I'm doing exactly that.

Let me tell you, writing an email to a stranger about how awesome my cats are and how much I hope they find a loving new home was f-ing ROUGH. I've been crying on and off and petting them constantly for the past few days.

Other news items:
-Keegan has been teaching me Latin
-I've been getting rid of a bunch of shit on Craigslist
-The waiting list at TO is not as long as I had feared
-The engagement dinners went quite well
-I've had adventures with the medical system
-I broke my heart a bit
-I had the best mentor teacher ever
-Keegan's sister in law is pregnant

Basically, life is pretty alright. Transitions are rough. I just want to get through this and get started on the next part.