You ever have one of those weeks that seem so busy that you aren’t sure what your name is anymore? Well I did. The past seven days or so have been packed.
I planned and participated in the graduation mass and ceremony for my students. I finished all the end-of-the-school-year paper work, and I sort of cleaned my classroom. I went to St. Louis for a beer festival where I had a bunch of stuff stolen after our car got broken into. I also managed to drink some beer while I was there. I saw the Blue Angels practicing some amazing aerial feats over a farm field in Illinois. My truck died and got repaired, although not by me, which is annoying. I took my mom to two eye appointments, both of which were over two hours long, and discovered she has the really bad form of macular degeneration. Somewhere I found time for my kid and my wife, so they haven’t divorced me. Whew! I need a vacation from my vacation.
Happy Birthday Kelly! MLW is a young, happy, healthy 35. Go middle age!
Eleven more wake-ups until I am done for the school year.
Being a teacher - it’s weird. When I first began teaching I felt a strange guilt for having the summer off, regardless of the effort and stress put forth and dealt with during the school year. Now, eight years into it, I feel no guilt at all. Now all I want is the break, the time. I want to read - read a lot, to drink beer and coffee, to play guitar, to spend time with my Podling. I want to write, to clean dishes and counters, to have a clean house for two and a half months.
See now I realize, fully, that I’ve earned it. Before I could self-righteously declare that I was justified for having the time off. I would have said that anyone with a regular full time job would have served the same amount of time, only stretched out over more weeks. Now I don’t give a shit. Now I don’t feel the need to justify myself. Now I just want the time, regardless of what the general working population may think. I want to be free of bullshit lies, games, and territorial in-fighting. Now I want to be me. Just for a bit. And soon I will.
I love my job. I love being a teacher. But I also love the U.S. system in that I get major time to recuperate from being Mr. Kersey, and I can just be Tom. No other job, no matter how great, would allow me the luxury of such a long consecutive period of time off. I love my life.
All I have to do is make it eleven more work days, then I can relax. All I have to worry about is raising a baby, taking care of a house, and writing the great American novel. Most people should be so lucky.
Twitter is down, so here’s a little slice of my life:
My dog just threw up two used tampons. Not sure how long those boys have been cooking in her gut, but it was reportedly intensely gross.
We have my two parents-in-law, Wife’s aunt and uncle, her 80 year old grandmother, my sister-in-law, and HoFBiL coming over for dinner in like ten minutes.
I’ve been up since 4 in the morning, not counting a bonus 40 minute nap from 5:05 to 5:45. When Podling starts talking, one of us has to get up to listen.
Podling is getting baptized tomorrow and neither of my own parents are coming for various manufactured reasons that I don’t have the energy to combat right now. With my luck my sins will be transferred my son and he will burst into flames upon the touch of holy water anyway, so maybe it’s best they aren’t there for that. (I wonder if there’s an insurance code for that).
I still don’t own the new Taylor Swift album.
That’s about it. Delicious pasta for dinner. I am, after all, a carbo junkie.
Spring is the greatest part of the year. I love it. Except for the allergies. I basically feel like I’ve got a terrible cold for two weeks, thus ruining the experience.
Today I decided to combat this preemptively by trying a Neti Pot. For those of you who don’t know, a Neti Pot is basically a small tea pot-ish device that you use to pour a saline solution up your nose. It goes in one nostril and comes out the other. Then you switch sides. I know. Gross, right? I used to think so. In fact, the Neti Pot solution has been suggested to me before, but I put it off thinking that it would be uncomfortable, gross, or worse. I could not have been more wrong.
I won’t go so far as to describe using the Neti Pot as enjoyable. Weird is more like it. But afterward my nasal passages felt better than they’ve felt in months. I can totally see how this could help someone with serious nasal allergies or a cold. If you suffer from nasal allergies, congestion, or a cold I recommend that you try using one of the many devices available. They work. I used one from a company called Neilmed, mostly because I had read a brochure from them a while ago that Wife brought home, but there are several available, including generic drugstore brands (CVS has one). You won’t regret it. I only wish I’d known about these things 20 years ago. I would have felt so much better my whole adult life.
P.S. Check out the totally cool (and weird) demonstration video from Neilmed!