no news is good news

I realized I haven't written in almost 2 weeks. Nothing to whine about, apparently. The big reason is that I went and refreshed myself at the Yellow Turtle Inn in New Windsor, MD. It's not too far from here, my room was affordable, and D was so good as to take on fatherly duties while I was luxuriating. I really should have gone away much sooner, like maybe a year ago, when much poop was hitting the biggest fan around, but I was still nursing then and it would have quite ruined the whole restfulness idea.

I had a whole weekend to really think, and pray, about all these different aspects of my life that have gone neglected since my pregnancy. I decided on a lot of things to cut out of my life right now, and some things I need to add (like a membership to the Y: 2 birds with one stone--alone time with childcare, and exercise). I also took several uninterrupted showers, ate 5 hot meals without getting up once, and had one of the most healing massages of my life. I mostly stayed in my luridly pink room, because it was about six hundred degrees outside with the humidity. Cicadas were almost deafening, and I couldn't imagine what it was like last year with bloody Brood X yammering away like a War of the Worlds death-ray.

I am excited about the Fall for the first time since maybe college. When I was teaching, I used to have this hollow dread every August, and the realization that I hadn't done anything I planned to do in the beginning of Summer. It's not that I didn't like teaching, but I really dislike school. Schedules, bureaucracy, dealing with parents and kids who don't want to put effort into a "fluff" class like art. Most kids were great, but I seem to need 100 great kids to balance out one dud. Plus I was a total workaholic stress queen, and felt like I had to re-invent my whole program every year. My last year I got much more calm about the whole thing, though lazy might be a better word for it. I still had the dread, and when I am most stressed out now, I have teaching nightmares: coming late to a class I hadn't prepared for, forgetting where my classroom is, having hecklers and screaming at them, teaching a whole room full of my least favorite people.

But this August has been great compared to the last seven: I'm not pregnant, not teaching at a school, not having surgery and 8 weeks of not being able to lift my son, and I am looking forward to a lot of great things in the Autumn. Singing regularly for the first time in 6 years, teaching a knitting class, reading some really great books, and A is taking properly long naps again. Praise God, I thought I had to give up my sanity-replenishment time. Maybe next week he'll start up again. I think I can take it, this time, since I know what it's like to go without.