Sad Day

Today is a sad day for me. After being a licensed family child care home provider for the past 23 years, it became necessary to allow my license to expire when it came up for renewal. Today my final license expired. Although I realize that it was a necessary move, I'm still very sad to have had to give up what has become my life's work. It's odd to walk through the house and see lots of equipment that is no longer needed, and very strange when I catch myself in a store thinking "This would work out really well for the daycare -- oh, wait! There isn't a daycare any more." It feels funny to have a computer full of finely edited documents including a parent handbook and many curriculum ideas, which I won't be using any more but represent way too much work to just delete off the hard drive. And I still will catch myself contemplating about how I could incorporate such-and-such activity into the daycare routine before I remember that all those thoughts are now irrelevant. My Child Development Associate credential, my Special Needs training certification, 12 semester hours of Early Childhood classes have all become moot.

I don't know what I'll end up doing next (except that I'll definitely keep on knitting while I wait to find out what's coming) but I'm sure that there will be something new and different in store at some point. I'll be sure to update when I find out what is coming.