SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Personal/Professional update:

I mentioned that I accepted the teaching position for the coming year. I just returned from a 2 day certification course for middle school agriculture and am even more excited to return to the classroom.

However, I must admit that I am somewhat already mourning the end of summer break. I have less than 2 weeks to cram in more fun!

Teacher and I are pondering a short overnight camping and driving trip to check out the mountains. She starts back before I do!

Two weeks isn't very long at all. Let us know where you decide to go.

We went up to Crested Butte this weekend. We mostly enjoyed hiking, camping, seeing wildflowers and being together, but we also really enjoyed seeing so many different people. We only spent 1 night away, but had a wonderful time, even if it was really cold in the tent and I discovered that Teacher does snore a bit when she is deeply asleep.

Bug bites, sore feet, chancedly meeting some friends near one trailhead and just taking it all in on a beautiful drive made for a wonderful weekend. We sort of wrapped up the trip (other than the 2 hour drive home) with playing in the snow at around 12,500 feet above sea level!

I don't think I got sunburned and I am ready to sleep in my own bed. Details for school start tomorrow.

[This message edited by countrydirt at 5:19 AM, Monday, July 24th]

Sounds like you had lots of fun, bug bites, snores and all.

Well crap!

Apparently I have agreed to go watch "Barbie" tomorrow with a group of our friends and I guess I have to dress up as Ken since Teacher is going as Teacher Barbie.

I think tomorrow is 'senior' day at some of the thrift stores, so maybe I can find a pink shirt and some white shorts for not much dough.

Oh the pressure!

Ironically, my 19 (almost 20) year old son took the sophisticated route and went to see "Oppenheimer" this past weekend, so I guess I'm regressing and going backwards.

Barbenheimer is what all the cool kids are doing. And on Wednesday’s we wear pink. ( from the movie Mean Girls) so you will be extra fashionable.

You are going to enjoy Barbie.

Silly aside update...

Barbie was a lot of fun. Our group of about a dozen folks had a nice time laughing and whatnot.

Teacher texted today and asked if I could come help her assemble a shelf and then put it in her car to take to school on Monday. Of course I said I could.

I didn't bring any tools, just my sweaty bald head and reading glasses. I pretty quickly assembled the shelf and put it in her car so she could take it to her new building. Then we sat around and visited for a while until I pled tired and got ready to head home. Teacher was a little tired as well, so it worked out. We'd been together the previous night until quite late She said she woke up with a sore neck and back because she didn't move all the throw pillows after our shenanigans and slept weird. Sleeping injuries are a real thing once you hit a certain age!

As I prepared to leave she said something along the lines of how she was so happy that she could call me anytime to come help with stuff. I replied something along the lines of "well, that's what boyfriends do," and she grinned a bunch and then I said, "but I know you don't like the term boyfriend, so, well, that's what I do," and added a few more banalities in a lame attempt to clarify.

We grinned even more. Then she made me laugh as she told me now she has described our intimate times with a couple of her best girlfriends (one of whom she had coffee with today and who had asked WHO was the guy in the picture on her facebook posts). I didn't know ladies talked about that kind of stuff cuz I sure as hell to don't talk to any of my friends about it! Little Molly had to jump in and get in on the laughter and joy that we were sharing.

Speaking of laughter and joy...this summer has just been awesome for us! Our trips to Yellowstone and parts north and to the mountains in Colorado were filled with so many moments of joy from the spectacular scenery and being together to see it all to coming around a corner and seeing a meadow full of yellow wildflowers and hearing Teacher exclaim, "Oh Dirt, look at that!" and smile and laugh and laugh. She even tried to get me out of the tent in the middle of the night to look at the stars and then talked on and on about the Milky Way and the billions of stars we could see in the dark mountain skies. It makes me so happy to hear her joy and to share in it.

Actual back to school for both of us starts this week, but we've both been in working on our classrooms previously. But we might take a little adventure with a full moon kayak float tomorrow night.

CD

I just wanted to pop in and offer you a note of thanks for keeping this thread going. It’s nice reading your updates and watching your relationship with teacher lady evolve over these many months.

i wish you and yours continued happiness.

Thank you ff4152! I hope I can provide a little light!

I'm fortunate in my advancing middle age that my vision is still okay. I wear contact lenses for correction of my distance vision, which means that my corrected eyes need readers in order to see the small stuff. But, both eyes are exactly the same so I am returning to only wearing a contact in my dominant eye and leaving the other eye bare and so I can see far as well as read. I did that a few years ago during the pandemic when my readers or glasses always were fogging up while wearing a mask.

It's been working well as I am retraining my brain to perceive the two types of vision. Today was the first official day back with a district wide professional development day and I felt sort of smug not having to carry readers in order to read. Small victory.

Teacher and I had an interesting conversation tonight. I'm in sort of a conflicted timeline this weekend. I really want to spend time with her, but I have a friend celebrating the big 7-0 and one of his good friends is an old schoolmate. The party would involve an overnight campout and guitars. She said, "I don't want to be the reason you don't do the things you want to do."

So I think I'm going to see my friends this weekend. One more reason to fall more in love with this wonderful lady.

Oh and little Molly met the wrong end of a skunk this morning. This little tidbit of information gave me a bit of a trigger to an unfortunate event I experienced 11 years ago when I trapped a skunk in a box trap and then just as I was getting ready to dispatch it, I looked a little too closely and received a large dose in the face (including my mouth) and later found all my clothes scattered across the driveway at the farm house were living in (it was February and cold and I'm the one who scattered my clothes about 10 yards from the house!).

Suffice to say, if you can avoid being sprayed by an angry skunk in the mouth, you should. I couldn't taste anything for about a week!

[This message edited by countrydirt at 5:18 AM, Friday, August 4th]

I'm in full on teacher prep mode. My classroom is close to ready and it has been fun getting acquainted with new colleagues and making new friends. I spent yesterday evening with Teacher (she made me a nice salad for dinner) and we snuggled and talked about our day. I told her about some of the other teachers in the building - 5 male teachers and 2 male administrators and 20 female teachers and 2 female administrators. But since I'm teaching in somewhat of a new discipline and the only male in the department and the grade level, I'm getting acquainted with the female teachers. My Teacher asked me if any of them were single. I had to pull out my man card and honestly say that I didn't know because I didn't ask. She was sort of amused at my response with something like, "Of course you didn't ask you man!"

Throughout my career, getting tech help was nearly impossible. Most of the classrooms are getting fancy new promethean television things. I'm not and I already told the principal that the technology would likely be wasted on me but I had a really ancient projector and could not get it to line up with my 20 year old smart board for simply using as a projector. The principal is new to the school and is understandably overwhelmed in his new position so I just mentioned it and went on. But, a few minutes later, one of the new assistant principals popped in and asked if she could help me with anything. I explained my dilemma with the projector and she jumped on the phone right away and within an hour had a pleasant Tech person in my room and he replaced the projector and did all the adjustments so I can at least dazzle my students with my powerpoints (don't worry, I don't bore them with walls of text and boring droning lectures of reading slide shows).

I'm liking this new school more and more every day. I'll meet my 6th graders on Thursday!

Good luck on Thursday!

I really enjoy your posts hearing about your life, life with Teacher & Molly, and the things you do.

We had a really nice Saturday evening. We both had things to do most of the day so didn't get together until later in the day. We thought we might try a new place for some music, but after looking over the huge bar/dance hall and experiencing the noise, we turned around and drove away. We talked a bit on the 15-20 minute drive back towards the city about what we might like to eat and decided that Mexican food would hit a craving but most of the usual places were closing soon. We agreed on one that was open later and headed down into a rougher part of town to try out some tacos.

I'm so glad we did. The food was amazing and one of the waitresses was a former student. We shared a hug and short visit then dug into our meals. I got up to pay only to discover that my former student had picked up our tab! Teacher got to witness my eyes get sort of watery and me have a hard time talking for a few minutes. I walked to another part of the restaurant and found the former student and gave her a big hug, called her a turkey and thanked her. She looked me right in the eyes and told me that she wouldn't have finished high school if not for me and then raved to Teacher that I was her all time favorite teacher. I was pretty blown away and Teacher, again, saw my eyes water a bit and heard my now husky voice while we drove to her house.

We had a sleepover, which actually is somewhat rare for us and agreed that we are really enjoying sleeping together and waking up beside each other.

I really never expected to feel this way again about anyone.

Countrydirt,

Just this week I learned that my Humanities/English teacher and also one of my soccer coaches passed away. They were two of the most influential teachers I had— and I went to three different high schools across two countries. I can only name a handful of teachers I had - most were fine but not memorable or special. It sounds like you are one of the special ones. And that is not surprising. The impact good teachers make is so potent, even 40 years later (in my case).

So glad your former student shared that with you and that you were willing to accept it.

What a beautiful update.

Dang, CD. You got me tearing up, too.

It's so inspiring to see you this happy.

Funny little aside from last week. We went on our weekly cruiser bike ride with a pretty large group and actually spent much of the ride side by side as we hadn't had much of a chance to visit during the week. After the ride we all gather at a local brewpub and catch up with our friends.

I have mentioned that we avoid the "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" labels. But, we sort of got caught by some old and new friends. One of the new friends is the receptionist where my son works so we've sort of gotten acquainted at the rides over the summer (she, like most 'mom' aged ladies, just loves my 20 year old!). She introduced her "boyfriend" and then met Teacher for the first time and asked if I was her boyfriend. Teacher started stumbling over her explanation of how she doesn't like the BF label when some of our longer time friends started shouting, "Yeah, he's her boyfriend, don't let her try to wiggle out of it!" We all laughed and laughed.

Later, another co-worker of my son's joined us and she raved about youngest Dirt and then paused and said, "Sheesh, he looks just like you, but with hair!" Then she started angling for information about his romantic life since she has a 21 year old daughter who would be "just perfect" for him. I just laughed and said that I gave up on matchmaking for my sons - although youngest Dirt is actually dating the one I casually thought he should date someday from the time they were in 3rd grade.

Later, Teacher admitted that 'maybe' I could be her boyfriend and "maybe' she could be my girlfriend. We laughed at ourselves again.

I guess after around 2 years, we might be okay with that.

[This message edited by countrydirt at 12:19 AM, Wednesday, August 16th]

Teacher and I had a couple of pretty frank conversations this weekend about our future together. Ultimately, those conversations ended up very good. I "told" her that we are going to get married and reminded her that we had talked about that earlier. She agreed that she liked that idea. I also said that I was going to ask my youngest son to be my best man at the wedding sometime in the future. She really liked that as well.

This is a really tough time of year for her. Her youngest son died 8 years ago in early August from a fentanyl OD - which is another layer of our combining stories of our lives. And we've talked a lot about it over the course of this month.

I talked to my youngest son about it when I came home today. He was very happy. VERY Happy. That sure made me feel good.

Teacher and I don't know when this is going to happen. We both have quite a lot going on right now. But, its going to happen for sure.

Now, I need to come up with an epic proposal. I'm thinking of learning to play "Make You Feel My Love" and then asking her principal to call an assembly on a Thursday afternoon and have my youngest son come along and be the speaker and he would introduce my oldest son to start talking about careers in IT and marketing then they would pause and ask a guest speaker come on and then I would come onto the stage/front of the commons area and sing the song and propose in front of her ENTIRE school and then whisk her away for a romantic weekend! Too much?

Plus we have to talk about whether this "engagement" needs a ring or whether I should save up money for a down payment on a final mortgage in our lives or come up with some other symbol. I told her that I felt like I could be ready for a house together in around a year after working full time and saving my pension and making sure my financial ducks were all in a row (or at least in the same pond).

Any advice? I don't intend on ever proposing again.

Definitely buy the ring and don't get a little diamond. She deserves a big rock.

I think the assembly is epic. If you wanted to be a little more intimate, you could do it at one of the places where they've asked you to play and invite people you want to be there.

I wouldn't stress so much about a ring. Maybe have an empty box if you go down on one knee. I'd rather have a larger stone from some of the cubic zirconia. Nobody else would know that you didn't spend a fortune on it, and I'd rather have the $$ for the down on a house. Is there a stone that is maybe not the traditional diamond that Teacher might like better? Way back in the day, I wanted a facet cut Ellensburg Blue set is platinum, with the stones as the middle of the flowers.

Will Molly be the flower girl? LOL. They make some really cute doggie outfits for weddings.

What a beautiful update. I think a ring of some sort would be lovely- she can see it on her finger and think of you. But maybe look for a unique ring with ethically sourced stones or a with birthstones of loved ones in a custom design (by you!) that suits her style. She’s active, so something not too tall or bulky so she can keep it on while riding :-)

As for where— you know her best. I would not enjoy the big audience, but my bestie would LOVE that. So you know best.
Somehow I am thinking of that great episode of Schitt’s creek where Patrick plays guitar and sings….

I'm starting to rethink the assembly idea. I do think playing it at an open mic with her and many of her friends and at least two of my three sons in attendance would be more appropriate and then follow that with a quick trip to Vegas for a concert (not for the wedding! since I know we both want family there). Her mother's 2nd marriage was in Vegas and was a surprise to her entire family, so we won't do that.

I'm also finding that there are some pretty fantastic ring companies out there and things have sure changed since the broke 24 year old could afford a tiny solitaire ring. Who knew that the world advanced in 35 years?!