This time of year is always bittersweet for me. The days of having all the time to do all the things I want, when I want to do them, are coming to an end.
Summer break is all about possibilities and options and all the daylight you could ever want to do all of those things in. We can make our own schedule, or have no schedule. There are no “school nights” to get in the way of plans.
This summer we’ve tackled Thomas’s Summer List, and I have to say we pretty much knocked that out of the ballpark. Even working with the loss of the five weeks of summer school we managed to hit all but four of the 14 county libraries (as of the writing of this – I fully expect to get all of them by the first day of school next week) and nearly every other thing, as well.
We’ve participated in the summer reading program, and we’ve taken care of chores like getting Posey’s nails cut, eye doctor visits and some deep cleaning and organizing of the house.
Those accomplishments feel great, I must say. I’m trying to spin them into a positive – we had the summer to do all these wonderful things, isn’t that great? – instead of a negative. We won’t have time to do anything remotely like these things for a long, long time now that school is looming.
Ironically, the pros to school starting again are kind of the opposite of the reasons to enjoy being out of school. Having to fit things in to a tighter schedule means I become more efficient. I have to become more creative to find bits of time to sneak in all the extras, and the loss of “no schedule” means we get into a nice rhythm of routine.
The waning daylight has no positive to it, unless you count it meaning pumpkin spice season is coming, and then Thanksgiving, and then Christmas, and then the light starts to stretch back out each day.
I also love my coworkers and my kidlets, and I actually get way more exercise on school days – especially since we’ve instituted dance parties to get everyone moving.
I should also admit that there’s a secret glee to seeing the Back to School displays go up in stores. I have always felt that this time of year is more of a New Year than the one celebrated on January 1.
The new notebooks and boxes of crayons say possibility to me; there’s a sort of clean slate feeling to a brand new backpack or lunchbox or pencil box. I get a thrill out of paper products year-round, but when there are entire aisles of them on sale I get kind of giddy.
This year I will once again be a student, taking classes at the Santa Rosa Junior College: typing this semester. And, because I have to take Typing One to take the required Typing Two, I will be taking them back-to-back. I like taking classes, but I have to scramble to make sure things on the home front are smooth for it to work.
There’s childcare for Thomas, and dinners; and the whole getting-there-early-enough-to-find-parking those first few weeks adds intensity to both of those things.
I can obviously type, but I have terrible ergonomics, and I totally have to look to find the symbols and numbers, so there will be a learning curve even in the first class. (When I say terrible ergonomics, I mean I type with my arms on the dining room table — my wrists, too — and I use the pads of my fingers, not the tips.)
Last week I attended a conference for my union, and that stirred up a lot of excitement and energy for the upcoming year. Maybe that can take the place of the excitement and energy of summer break, or at least ease the transition back into the routine of another school year. The possibilities of summer can segue into the possibilities of a new year, beginning next week.
Now that I mention it, the excitement is building. I will get a new notebook today, and write 2018-2019 on it with a new Sharpie. Yay!
Juliana LeRoy wears many hats, including wife, mother, paraeducator and writer. She can be spotted around Windsor gathering material, or reached at
ml****@so***.net
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