TLC AND ALCOHOL: WHAT THEY REALLY MEAN TO ME

What a year. What a fucking year.  What a fucking ridiculous, insane year.

I have one week left of the academic year, and today I visited two different stores (a wine-specific favorite and a local packie) to prep and fortify myself for the final slide.

The school district for which I work did not go remote this year. Teachers have worked full-on since the beginning of September, taking only an occasional snow day or pre-holiday as a “remote” day. Otherwise, we have had students in front of us since the very beginning, teaching hybrid and teaching “live” kiddos all at the same time.

Curriculum has been altered, teaching methodologies scrapped, and technology embraced to the point of folly since Google Classroom crashed several times during the school day over the past ten months. The twist to that is that while Google Classroom was crashing and burning, Google itself shared outage maps of its own worthless product’s inability to effectively maintain its own integrity.

At least the situational idiocy allowed me to cover irony as a literary device.

Now, with three teaching days plus two teacher-mandated days left in this 2020-2021 Pandemic Teaching Year from Hell, I have decided to acknowledge my inner alcoholic. I won’t deny that many a mimosa was sipped at an ungodly hour over the weekends, and that many a gin and tonic found its way into my clenched fists long before dinner reached the table.

So, over this summer break, I am going to give my brain and liver some TLC, ignore requests from school administration to continue my leadership role, and fly low, very low, under the radar of extra work. Last summer was a working summer, and I’m not doing that this time.

July and August are mine, all mine.

I may still be old and gray in September, but, with any luck at all, I will at least be alive and standing when the new school year starts.