TAKING A BREATH NOW

I know, I know. Everyone thinks I have the cushiest job in the world because I teach middle school and get "so many vacations." Again, let me remind you: I do not get paid for Thanksgiving break, December break, February break, April break, federal holidays, nor snow days. Nope. I get paid to work 184 days, and that's it. 

The rest of it? Unpaid labor. Please, do not tell me how wonderful my life is for all of the time I am on vacation. This is unpaid vacation, fyi.

So, I have to laugh when people ask me how I am spending my February vacation. That's easy! I'm spending it grading papers, reading essays, editing a student's creative writing that is above and beyond class activities, and creating curriculum for an upcoming absence that I hesitate to take only because it means more work for me. 

Oh, sure, this week I managed to grab two lunches with friends and read a couple of mass-market fiction novels. I caught up on my sleep after being sick for about ten weeks. I even managed a doctor's appointment so it wouldn't impact my school schedule.

The good news is that I could just assign something online for when I'm out and call it a day. Let the sub worry about whether or not the kids are accessing inappropriate or illegal websites. Let the sub police their Google connections with each other, passing gossip and other questionable information between classmates, teammates, and others via the internet in real time. Let the sub monitor the bathroom sign-out online to see who is creating mayhem that constantly forces admin to shut down the toilet facilities. Let the sub worry about technology failures or the fact that my room, and only my room, is the Blue Tooth Black Hole from Hell where internet access can only be re-established if you're standing in the windowsill on a sunny day and Jupiter aligns with Mars.

The bad news is that my co-teacher and paraprofessional now have more new stuff to add to my over-crowded curriculum. The phrase, "You're redoing this unit yet again?" has become a running joke over the years because nothing is ever perfect, and I don't have the same students sitting in front of me year after year. 

Yeah, I've had some days off this past week. Whoopie! It has allowed me to lesson-plan at my own kitchen table instead of sitting at my school desk being constantly interrupted by staff, students, useless emails, and even more useless announcements. The food is plentiful, the tea and coffee are fresh, and, best of all, I can pee whenever I need to. No worries about bladder infections this week, that's for dang sure.

The best part of this week (I'm not going to lie) is the retirement seminar I attend online. It's in real-time, with questions and answers and a slew of information, much of which I already knew, but enough to provide me with specific questions for my upcoming retirement consultation in March. I can almost see and smell the end of this 184 day "vacation" so many people berate me about, my cushy job, my summers off, my extra breaks during the year, my snow days, my holidays. 

Yes, I can almost envision what a true vacation will look like, one without emails and updates, without essays and Google forms, one without data, data, and more data. I'm still a few years out, but, if I can drag my sorry self to the finish line, I might just be able to enjoy a year or two of solace and sanity.

Okay, back to work. I'll take a breath now because the next one won't be until mid-April. Hold me a (toilet) seat until then!

VALENTINE'S SENTIMENT

Valentine's Day -- The day when singles like me get reminded how great it is to control the TV remote, choose what we want to eat for dinner, eat as much ice cream as we can stomach, and save money on over-priced cards, gifts, and flowers. 

I did receive a couple of unexpected gifts: a co-worker gave me a small nylon bag full of chocolate, and one of my last-class students gave me an expensive chocolate bar. The best surprise, though, came from a student who is not even mine but has a locker right outside of my room. Oh, sure, he gave out chocolate and candy to a lot of people, but I'm not even his teacher, so it was a really sweet gesture.

I will also admit that the Valentine  attached to the small chocolate bar is probably the best, most heartfelt, most honest sentiment I've ever received. This kid totally "gets" it. If only more adults could figure this out, then we might have some sanity in this world.

SHOPPING FOR MORSELS

I have been careless with my grocery shopping.

To be honest, I despise shopping of any kind. I once went to the mall with a girl who loved shopping. Me? I know what I want and can be in and out of a store in mere seconds. This ex-friend of mine? Painfully slow and meticulous and flighty to the point that a forty-five minute shopping excursion turned into four hours. Four. Painful. Agonizing. Hours. I passed the time imagining ways to dispose of her body on the trip home. 

But, I digress. Grocery shopping is painful because it's annoying (follow the list, check the dates, get irritated if the items aren't in stock, etc.), and there are people -- always people -- blocking aisles or jockeying for a check-out line or ramming their carts into my body parts. I avoid grocery shopping as much as I can when, to be smart, I should go every couple of days and just buy the few things I need and go through the express line.

But, no. Denial always leaves me with a four-to-six grocery bag extravaganza.

The problem with me is that I don't always pay attention to what I'm buying. I have often come home with one-ply toilet paper (is there even a point to this idiocy?) or diet something-or-other or fat-free feta cheese or some other product that has zero business being in my home.

The other day, I purchased semi-sweet chocolate morsels. Yes, they're for baking, but I also just snack on them by the handful. I know I should've gotten the Nestle brand, but they're kind of soft-ish and creamy (great for baking, but a little weird for snacking), so I purchased the store brand. Usually, that's all right by me. Except . . . 

Except I didn't read beyond the "semi-sweet morsels" part of the package. I did not see the word "mini" in small, cursive script. Mini, as in miniscule. These things are smaller than baby boogers.

I tried snacking on them, but I have to shoot about a dozen at a time, and the darn things often escape, making them nearly impossible to find on the floor, the table, down the sleeve or front of my shirt, or they just vanish. Poof! Like magic, they disappear everywhere but into my stomach.

I have a snow day from school, so I decide to make pumpkin muffins. I mean, why not, right? As I'm about to put them into the oven, I think, "You know what these muffins need? Miniature chocolate chips!" I grab the bag out of the cabinet and drop handfuls of mini-morsels into six of the twelve muffins. I use a fork to stir them, churning some morsels into the bottom of the batter.

Twenty minutes later, I take the muffins out of the oven and notice that it is easy to tell the chipped muffins from the pure ones because the morsels all floated to the top of the batter as soon as I put the tin in to bake. Seriously, like art deco or pop art designs, the six chocolate-laden muffins have speckled patterns on them.

Dagnabbit! The mini-morsels are so miniature that they migrate to the top like soda bubbles in tonic.

Oh, of course I'll eat those muffins. I'm not a purist. However, I certainly will be much more careful shopping from now on. Hahahahahaha. Who am I kidding? I'll screw something up again. Just watch me. But I doubt it will be the semi-sweet chocolates for baking. 

I've learned my lesson on that one. Deliciously; but learned it, just as well.

IT'S QUIET OUT THERE; TOO QUIET

It's very quiet outside. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that makes a person tense and nervous. Why? Because we barely had any snow around here last winter, negligible amounts actually, and the calm of this winter so far lulls us all into a false state of safety.

Ten years ago this very week (January 26, 2015), after a quiet and innocuous start to winter, we were hit with a storm that ushered in a series of storm after storm. I was outside shoveling the driveway every other day. Six inches of snow one day, more two days later, and the pattern kept on until we accumulated 110 inches of snow. We had so much snow that we had nowhere left to put it. By the time April arrived, we pretty much just sat around and cried. Our biceps were toned and muscular, but we cried, just the same.

Forty-seven years ago this week was the Blizzard of '78. We all know you young'uns are tired of hearing about it, like it was some catastrophic milestone of a storm . . . because . . . it was. It snowed anywhere from one to four inches of snow an hour for just over two days straight. It snowed sideways. It snowed through winds over eighty miles per hour. It snowed through thunder-snow. (Yes, I was outside for that, and, unlike Jim Cantore, I did not muchly enjoy the experience.) The ocean rose fifteen feet along the coast. More than seventy people in Massachusetts died. It snowed so suddenly and freakishly that highways shut down, thousands of vehicles were abandoned, and strangers wandered from house to house begging for mercy. Another 39,000 sought out shelters. Transportation was cancelled, and we were in an emergency shut-down for at least a week.

Those of us who lived here during both the Blizzard of '78 and that endless snowy winter of 2015 have earned the right to brag. But, along with glory comes the paranoia of previous trauma. 

We know what's out there.

The longer it stays calm and quiet, the more we hold our breath and wring our hands and overstock with milk, bread, eggs, and toilet paper. We know it's going to happen. After all, last winter lulled us into complacency, and that can only lead to disaster. When it does, because it will, do not ask, even in song, "Do you want to build a snowman?" Well, don't ask that until May. It has only snowed a few times out here in May. We can tolerate it by then.