Be gentle with the teachers in your lives, folks. A lot of us are just barely keeping it together, after two-plus years of pandemic teaching. I ran into a colleague I hadn’t seen in a while yesterday, and he asked how the semester had been, and I was going to give the standard polite ‘fine,’ and instead I ended up saying, ‘Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever been as tired at the end of a semester as I am right now,’ and I was a little teary when I said it.
But I’m okay — my classes ended yesterday, and Monday hopefully all my students will hand in their final papers, and I can grade everything and then I’ll be done until mid-August. Well, I agreed to supervise one independent study over the summer, but otherwise, done, and the independent study should be pretty low-key.
Liz came by to train with me this morning; we took it fairly easy because I was so tired (in part because of the board meeting on Thursday and having trouble going to sleep until 2 a.m., and yesterday I managed to get to bed by 1, but still). We talked about summer training plans, and I told her if she wanted to train early, it’d help get me on an early schedule, so I think we’ll be trying that. 6:30 a.m. workouts? Whee?
But the rest of the weekend, I am planning to take very easy indeed. It’s rainy but not too cold right now, so I have brought my work out to the front porch, in case I feel like working.
I have also brought a copy of Terry Pratchett’s _Snuff_, which I am re-reading for the sheer joy of it. Ellie is out here with me, very happy to get to watch the world go by; she’s almost 17 now, an old dog who likes to wander around in placid manner and also sleep a lot. An inspiration, really. I should take notes.
And I have a little Fairy rose bush waiting to be planted, and some blueberries, and some stock and snapdragons for the window boxes, so all that will happen at some point this weekend. And I may go down to the basement and sew a few scarves and tea towels.
I’m hoping I do a little writing too, and some drawing. I need to start catching up on e-mail and FB messages; I was so busy and overwhelmed the last few months, I mostly didn’t even read a lot of them, unless they were clearly critically urgent. Sorry, folks!
But mostly this weekend, resting. I just need to go make myself a giant mug of tea, and then I will have everything I need.