This message is being auto-posted while I am retreating.

Never. Never. Never in all my life have the dual meanings of the word retreat been more perfectly aligned in my life.

Retreat in the active “run away” sense: Work. While I have confidence that things will work out in my department and area, there’s no denying that it’s been a stressful few weeks. Monday was awful, and Tuesday was worse.

Having a three day weekend at the end of this week? Excellent timing, and I think I speak for every single person employed or no longer employed by my company.

Retreat in the “calm quiet away from it all” sense: There are so many “about to get started” things going on for me this fall, it’s almost like going back to school, but without the tuition. It really is a good thing that I’ll be able to take some quiet time out from the day-to-day and weekend-to-weekend.
There’s the part where I have a new boss and am on a new team, and that we don’t know exactly what changes may happen within my personal responsibilities, if any.

There’s the part where I’m going to start teaching Sunday school to 4 and 5 year olds, some ridiculous percentage of whom have a parent who is an academic theologian. (That was intimidating when I was thinking it, but then I remembered that my closest friend has a parent who is an academic theologian, and I bet she was just like the rest of the kids in any Sunday school she might have attended.)

The fact remains that I probably am less familiar with the bible than any of the other people teaching Sunday school at my church. I’m 90% not worried, but the other 10% seems to be in charge of blogging.

And then there’s the part where I’m taking the fertility meds and hoping/worrying about trying to get pregnant. I know that I’m making all reasonable efforts to do this “right” … but last time it took 5 cycles, and every single one of them that didn’t work was heartbreaking. And if it works, then there’s the fairly intense prospect of growing an actual human baby, right there inside my very own (ha!) body.

Anyway, like I was saying, I’m off having a nice quiet RETREAT from thinking about all this stuff. Or in order to think about this stuff. Or in order to get to know more people. And learn something about the bible, I hope. Something that might interest children.

And at 8 am on Tuesday I have my mid-cycle check to see if it looks like a go for medical babymaking this month.