Tying a Knot and Holding On

It's not that I don't enjoy teaching. I missed it terribly while we were living in England and I'm glad to be back in the classroom. However, the one thing I didn't miss is the need to go up to my dark, non-airconditioned school building every Sunday for about 3-4 hours in order to stay on top of the demands placed upon teachers. Six day work weeks are no fun, especially when you factor in the salary I receive for my efforts.

Oh sure, I enjoy getting paid during the summer when there are no classes. And yeah, we get a 45 minute planning period every day. But every week we have at least one meeting of some sort during planning time. This past week I had a meeting on 3 of the 5 school days. My students may not have any science homework most nights, but I certainly do.

Right now what's keeping me motivated is travel. At Thanksgiving, we'll be in NYC for the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. Over the Christmas holidays, we'll be traveling with the 7th grader to California while the college coed visits a friend in England. At spring break, we'll head to Turks and Caicos for a relaxing beach vacation. June will find us touring the east coast while July will be busy with an Alaskan cruise. 

As they say, you can't take it with you when you go and so I intend to enjoy the fruits of my teaching labors by traveling with the family every time we have a holiday from school. You hear about folks toiling in the work trenches their whole lives, only to up and get sick or die as soon as they retire. If that happens to me, I won't have any regrets because I plan to rack up the travel miles from now until the Lord calls me home.

My Second Home

So it's not a ski chalet. Or a lake house. And it sure aint a beach condo either. But it's where I spend a good chunk of my time for nine months out of the year. It's my classroom.

I chose a safari theme for my classroom many years before I actually went to Kenya in February, and so it's convenient that I could return with some of the things I purchased from the Maasai tribe we visited and use them as decor.

It's not some cutie patootie little kid look - more like a comfy family room. However, it suits me just fine. And I might as well feel at home because that's where you'll find me for at least 9 hours every Monday to Friday, from mid August to early June. And weekends... can't forget you'll find me there on Sunday afternoons for at least the first six weeks of any given school year trying to stay a step ahead of the kids. Fortunately, I can say it's all worth it.

Just Another Manic Sunday

What is it about Sundays? When I was in college, Sundays were the worst. I wondered what fab homecooked meal granny had whipped up for the rest of the family. I knew I should have washed clothes Friday or Saturday but didn't and now I'm hoping I have something clean in the back of my closet to wear tomorrow. My project for class that's due in a few days didn't magically finish itself, so there's that. 

Now that I'm middle-aged, I find I kinda feel the same way about Sundays as I did when I was a college student. I should have worked out on Saturday or Sunday, but I rolled over and slept until 7:30 since that seems like a luxury compared to the rude 5:30 am alarm Monday through Friday. I should have done everything on my school to-do list, but after 4 hrs on campus this weekend I threw up my hands and came home. I should have taken the dog for a long walk, but I never got around to that either.

What I did do was buy a ticket for the college coed to come home for a long weekend next month. I let the 7th grader invite several friends over for swimming and a meal Friday after school when my fanny was dragging after Parent Orientation Thursday evening at my campus. Plus I washed every piece of dirty clothing in the house, so we all have clean undies to wear tomorrow.

As much as I love teaching, I'll still do the countdown to next Friday when we're staring down two more precious days of freedom from the workaday routine.