Endings and Beginnings and Sinking Fast

Remember when you were a kid at the start of summer vacation?

I'd wake up on the first day of vacation and literally see allllll those days of vacation time like a road, unrolling before me. So many possibilities!!

I spent a great deal of my childhood immersed in books. The season was unimportant. But during the summer, I could spend a whole day reading.
Anything I wanted to.

My dad is still one of my heroes for that. :)

I didn't have to put my book away to get ready for school. I didn't have to leave the book in my room so I could catch the bus. I didn't have to suffer through a whole day of "learning" so I could get back into my book again.

So I liked to read. I still do, although a great deal of the reading I do now is online. I still read voraciously, but I guess I'm reading mostly non fiction now. Because of course if you read it on the internet, it's true.
(Abraham Lincoln said that.)

I rode my bike.
Hung out with my brothers in the front yard. We shot each other with imaginary guns, shot our friends, died a hundred times before lunch. The more dramatic, the more better. ;)
Visited friends.
Went swimming.
As a family, we went camping and fishing, too.
The expanse of time ahead of me on the first day of summer seemed infinite.

My favorite part then and now (besides not being regimented all day long) was sleeping in. Not having to get up early. Heavenly. :)

So I confess to still seeing summer as an endless expanse of days to goof off in. Oh sure, my responsibilities are different now, I am getting ready for company in two weeks (MY SON IS GETTING MARRIED!!!), I have a job, I do the regular stuff of laundry and dishes and sweeping the larger chunks of whatever off the floor... but still. It's summer.

I looked at the calendar this morning. There are fifteen days of summer program left. Ten of those are work days for me, I am taking a week off just before the arrival of friends and family for the wedding. Cleaning the house. Doing laundry. SLEEPING IN.

I wouldn't take that time off at all, but the way vacation time works with my employer, if you don't take your vacation time, you lose it when it rolls over again on your anniversary date.

I'd prefer not to lose that time, really. I have more than earned it. Most of my vacation time used in the past five years has been for surgery. Cleaning the house will be a treat compared to that. The mild pain in the ass of mopping a floor is pretty mild compared to the white-hot agony of a sliced and diced knee, trust me.

I'll probably end up going out to my school and meeting with the new principal during that week, as it may be my only opportunity to do so before the chaos of a new school year starts. It's super important to establish a decent working relationship with everyone on the staff at the school. Fortunately, it's not difficult. They're all great people and realize that we're all on the same team. The kids are the winners of the game, though.

I usually buy a bag of fun sized Crunch bars ('crunch' week... get it?) and drop one off in everyone's mailbox with a little note on the first day of school. I also stop at Winco and get the large boxes of individual bags of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies and try to get those set out in the staff lounge on the first day for the teachers.

::making note to self to email my manager so she can purchase those items for me.... I usually end up buying them myself:::

Say what you want about public education. I have issues with the system myself, as I think we do a grave disservice to our children in institutionalizing their learning. I think they'd learn better and thrive more in a less regimented lifestyle.
Whatever.
I can't change the system.

Hell, I'm not even a day care fan.
I think if at all possible, children should be with their families.
If one chooses to send a child to school, I think a parent should be home with them before and after. But those same children have to be fed and clothed and most of the time, that means that either Mom or Dad (or both of them) need to have employment that takes them away from their family.

So while not a fan of day care, I am a huge fan of kids in general, and I'm glad that when they're with me, they're with someone who genuinely cares about them. They're going to be in day care anyway. It may as well be with a person who puts them first.

The public school staff I've met during the course of my job are amazing. They're all very different personally, but all of them are united in their love of children and a wish to make a difference. Within the constraints and limitations of the system, they are making a big difference in the lives of a lot of kids.

I mentioned I'm not a fan of public education. And I'm really not. But the people who work there are laboring under some pretty oppressive circumstances. You couldn't pay me enough to teach public school.

So on tap for today?
First, a shower. It's nearly eleven. I got up at 6. And 7:22. And 8:15. I made a smoothie, took some aspirin, sat here at the computer watching my husband prepare to replace the kitchen sink and get started on that job. He has pulled out the old one. Made in 1959. It's on the back porch. Our brand new stainless steel sink and faucets and drains are strewn across the kitchen floor. It's mildly entertaining, who knew there were so many creative uses for the word 'fuck?

So yeah. That's my life right now.
How's yours?