caramelknits

Four and a half days

That's the amount of time I have left until Winter Break begins. One of the many joys of being a teacher is the three weeks off for the holidays... The only problem is (and of course you knew there had to be one) is that every year I promise myself I'm going to do nothing, but I end up over-scheduling myself with a myriad of activities. Instead of taking the time to rejuvenate and relax myself, I run around the whole time, trying to get in all the stuff I can't during the school year.

The first week always goes something like this:
Celebrate birthday, clean house as much as possible in order to put up decorations late, knit till my fingers hurt to try to get as many gifts finished as possible, give up on the gifts as it gets too close to Christmas and spend endless hours at the mall and Costco searching unsuccessfully for the second most perfect gift I can find that is also within our budget, buy "It's a Wonderful Life" dvd's for everyone on the list in an attempt to just have something to give all the people who lost out on their knitted gift this year, AND THEN celebrate Christmas!!

Week two?
Collapse. Then try to make up for Christmas by baking everyone my favorite iced sugar cookies and banana bread and delivering.

Since this may be the last non-pregnant, childless New Year's, we're also planning to head down to our friends' house in San Diego this year to party it up "freak-style." We always have a great time hanging out with the crew down there, but are still debating whether to face the freeways and traffic going in and out of Tijuana or to take the train and our chances that the New Year's crowd won't be too large or annoying. (Amtrak's real motto should be something like, "It's your sanity...Take it for a ride!" Especially during the holidays.)

Week three will be spent entirely getting ready for the kids to come back to school with new projects planned and reservations for the rest of the year's field trips. New paper needs to be hung on the classroom walls, lesson plans need to be finalized, and my resolve for finally getting my rules and procecures across must be firmly in place before I go back to school on that following Monday.

So here I go. Four and a half days before craziness ensues. I will let you all continue to be envious of the scheduling of a teacher, but remember...I will in no way be eating bon-bons on the sofa for 21 days, I've been working 50-60 hour weeks, and, while some of you will be staying home with a couple children of your own this season, I will be going back to 20+ children very soon.

posted by caramelknits @ 12:15 PM