. . . and I always find it so anticlimactic.

Maybe it is just me, but it is something that I think about and dream about nearly all year long. Yes, I do! Almost as soon as the new school year starts — which I am excited for, don’t get me wrong — I start thinking about the end of it because I lament the lack of time I have for ME — the “ME” time I had ALL SUMMER LONG.

All of a sudden, my life goes back to being driven by a bell. I have assignments to grade and old assignments to redesign, or assignments to create because I’ve come up with a completely different idea or standards have changed . . . or we’ve got new technology to incorporate, or . . . you get the idea. I can’t get involved in novels or books. (Well, let’s be honest: I don’t let myself get involved in those because I’d let my real work [ie., grading papers] go and I can’t afford to do that!) I cannot stay up to the wee hours of the morning watching TV or reading a book, knowing that — no matter how early Mr. T gets me up in the AM — I can still take a nap when I get tired the next day. I don’t get to eat lunch out with the “real world” anymore once school starts up again. I have to think about things like Back to School Night and Conferences, my own plus my own children’s at their schools. Sports lessons. Scouting. Life becomes a lot more difficult to juggle . . . so it is no wonder that I look forward to the respites that are Thanksgiving, Winter, and Spring Breaks. And the grand one of them all . . . Summer Vacation! I think about it as the year goes by . . . not everyday, and not very consciously, but it comes up from time to time. Me: “Oh, if it were vacation right now, I could be ___ (fill-in-the-blank).”

But then it arrives . . . the day I have been waiting for: the day that my grades are done, and my classroom is tidied up and locked up, the last i has been dotted and the last t has been crossed, and I pull away from the teacher’s parking lot. In my fantasy “that’s-120-days-away not-including-weekends” mind, I run through the list of things I could do because I have the afternoon free: get a pedicure, get my hair done, get a massage, go shopping for some errand (but at a more leisurely pace), go for a walk, go to the park and take a nap — it all never happens exactly like the way I think it will. It’s all very “meh” because, invariably, I just go home. This day that has loomed in my mind, this mythical and magical day, now that it’s here? I go home. That’s it. There’s no grand finale or final coda.

At least I’ll have more time to blog. 🙂