Summer!

While the rest of the south sank into the annual stupor otherwise known as summer about a month ago, my summer officially started ten minutes ago. It's a miracle, and one I thought would never come, but after aging years dealing with this online class (and apologizing to my students for piling that much work on them), I am now free as a bird. And as usual, this makes me a little nervous. It's one thing to steal a few hours off while you're supposed to be grading, or taking a day off on a weekend, but it's a whole different ballgame when you're suddenly faced with a month of nothing. No appointments, no deadlines, just days of emptiness. I suppose I should be grateful, since at least it's not three months like last year. After about a week, I really don't know what to do with myself, I've watched all the TV there is to watch, cleaned the house, finished reading the Internet, and am left completely understanding why bored teens get into so much trouble. And just look at what we got ourselves into during my 12-week summer vacation: We not only bought a house, we also adopted a dog! It's scary to know that a month off was enough to inspire us to get another dog, imagine what we would have done with an additional eight weeks.

Honestly, I may pretend to be one of those people who can't wait to go home and be done with work, but I think I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that I really am a closeted Puritan. Husband-dear will even joke about that, when he tells friends that my idea of relaxing is sitting in front of the TV, or on the backporch for five minutes, and then saying, "Oh, I can fold laundry while I sit here. Or maybe I can read that 500-page tome on the latest developments in psychometric research now."

But you see, he shouldn't talk either. He's just as bad. Husband-dear will come home tired as a dog, and instead of relaxing, he will merely reduce his planned 11 mile run to a "mere" 6 miles. Or, and this is the worst part, he will involve me. We'll be lying in bed at say 6:30 in the morning on a Sunday, and he will say something like, "This is such a nice relaxing way to get up, you want to go for a long bike ride?", or, "This is such a nice relaxing morning, wouldn't today be a great day to paint the laundry room, or clean out the attic? Or you can paint and I can do the attic?" And while any normal human being would laugh at such ideas at the crack of dawn (or more likely, snore, since normal people don't ever seem to be up as early as we are), I usually ponder his ideas for a moment, and then realize that I would very much like to subject myself to some tedious task or painful physical exercise. Not only are we puritans, we are puritans with some serious guilt issues apparently, you know, "idle hands do the devil's work", "hard work never killed anyone", and all that good stuff.

Fortunately, I didn't go to school for all those years for nothing, and I have figured out what our problem is. You see, we may not be able to sit around for days on end, but we do really enjoy stolen, or secret pleasures. Like going out on a night when we both need to do things for work. Or watching a movie while we should be working on our tax return. Keeping that in mind, here's my solution to my month off. I am going to take a bunch of things home with me that I really do need to do. I have to develop another online class, work on the new student handbook, and transcribe and analyze interview data. I will take all of that with me, put it upstairs, and then whenever I feel bored, or don't know what to do, all I'll have to do is remind myself that I can always go and work, and suddenly, I know I will have host of bright ideas for other, far more entertaining activities.

Alright, now that we've got that sorted out, let the summer begin!