I AM NOT A SANE PERSON

What do you do when you have a few hours of free time strung together, but you need to stay close to home?

Most sane people would answer with practicality and forethought.  They’d suggest taking in a local ball game or lunching out on a restaurant patio while sipping margaritas. 

I am not a sane person.

I pack my car to its capacity with two kayaks, a couple of board games, a few changes of clothes, and head to my sister’s house in Maine.  She only lives about seventy-five minutes away, and I have easy access to the major New England highways should I need to make an emergency run home or elsewhere.

I won’t go into all the details in this blog because, quite frankly, I’m exhausted.  I’m in recovery mode still from a nasty, knock-me-flat-on-my-ass bout of peritonsillar cellutlitis/abcess.  The overview is that my sister and I hike a small mountain, hit L. L. Bean plus a few other stores, go kayaking the wrong way and paddle the Mousam River rather than Estes Lake (they’re both connected), meet the new puppy addition (she’s adorable), and play some board games and rounds of Cribbage.

All this sounds wonderful, and it really is – I have a fantastic weekend.

Except for the email. 

Yup.  A work email, confirming my worst fears about our move to a new combined school:  some of our stuff is missing again.  Many of us had stuff stolen during and after the first move, and now it is happening again as we transition into our new digs.  This means I have to forego the last beach day or two and get into my classroom to rescue (then hide and lock up) my professional belongings. 

If I don’t do this right away, I’m going to go nuts with anxiety.

As soon as I get back from my jaunt, I unpack the gear from the hatch, wipe everything down, put it away, and start immediately packing my car with things for my classroom – three boxes of curriculum, and some furniture that I rescued last spring so it wouldn’t be thrown out (a old chair and a rolling cart).  I’ll stuff in the two grocery bags full of supplies tomorrow morning before I head to work.

That’s right – to work … on one of the last great beach days of the summer because, as I mentioned before, I am not a sane person.  If that last fact doesn’t scare people, then come by my classroom when (if) I discover any of my stuff missing out of the thirty-nine crates I packed up and marked.  When (if) I find everything in order, then I’ll sip margaritas on the patio.

That’s sanity I can tolerate.