Friday, June 06, 2008

If I'm on Summer Vacation, then How Come I Can't Find Time to Sit and Do Nothing?

I'll be honest. The end of the school year caught up with me and sort of took me by surprise. One minute it was late winter, and the next minute it was "Holy Crap! I've got to get grades finished!" I don't know where the time went.

So, here I am, on summer vacation, and I haven't really seen any vacation yet.

Oh yeah, that's another thing. Don't you hate it when people who aren't in education go on and on about how cool it must be to have three months off all summer to sit around and do nothing? I wish. First off, three months is a dream. I'll be back in my classroom by the end of July trying to get ready for our first full day - with kids - on the 8th of August. I think it adds up to something like nine weeks. As for doing nothing...I've already had one in service session, and I have about five more full days of in service before I head up north to do summer camp, then about two more before school starts. I think I spend more time in a classroom than I do on my deck.

Which brings me back to our topic. My deck needs to be painted - again. My white glider needs to be painted. I need to paint the porch. I'm still trying to finish painting two wardrobes I was given that will eventually become storage units in my craft room/office.

The same craft room/office I've been painting since March.

Last year we let the yard go to hell because of the drought. It did a beautiful job of doing just that. It looks much better than it did, green grass being something of a novelty after last year, but the weeds are amazing. And we had built some raised beds in the back yard that had no landscaping whatsoever but we never got around to putting anything in it. After all, with no rain, who wants to spend money on landscaping?

So I've been running to Walmart to buy bags of topsoil and trying to get these raised beds filled with something other than red clay and rock. Fun. And the wheelbarrow tire went flat so I had to get that fixed. And then I found a sale on daylillies at Lowe's and bought and planted ten of them. And then we're reseeding grass seed in spots that went bare over the winter and last summer, so that needs to be watered.

And that's just the yard. I need to mulch still, need to get more weeds under control and my riding mower is still in the shop so I'm push mowing this entire yard which takes two hours when the temperature is in the 70's. It will take much longer now that it's in the 90's.

I can't believe how many errands I end up doing when I'm not in school. I've been to the eye doctor, the allergiest, and the dentist. I've taken Morgan, my kitty with cancer, to the vet for a look-see. I've gotten a hair cut (finally).

I'm beginning to wonder when the vacation will start.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Teachers having the summer "off" is as big a falsehood as "bankers hours." Like you, when I am not at school, doing summer workshops, or getting ready for school I am taking care of things I couldn't get done during school.

Try to enjoy your summer, nonetheless, the new term will be here before we know it.

Mrs. T said...

Amen, sista.
Sorry about your Morgan. We love our kitty friends, don't we?
Any chance you'll be around July 9-12? That's when I'll be in Nashville for the SRE High School's that Work conference. We're staying at the Gaylord Opryland Inn. (heh heh, I said "gaylord").
I still have to go back on Monday to finish up-our last inservice.

Anonymous said...

I feel ya. I could post something nearly identical... I've been doing yard work, the house work, running errands until my head spins... everything just gets put off until summer. I'm also doing a ton of PD this summer, planning for next year, etc. Oh well. They get an awful lot of work out of me for unpaid time off!

loonyhiker said...

Gardening is a never ending process, even in the winter. Just think about how it relieves stress!