Carry on

I realize you may not find it all that enthralling to read about the obsessive time tracking of a high-school teacher, and I further realize that this blog would be more interesting if I included more concrete detail, as I’m always urging my students to do.  I live in a reasonably interesting place, for example, but I mostly vagueblog about where I go and what I do there.  Sorry.

I was telling MW that I had planned an “indulgent” weekend, and she asked what I was going to do to indulge.  Get a massage, I said.  And some other stuff!  That I hadn’t planned yet!  But I’d been enjoying telling myself all week this was going to be a real weekend.  Maybe I would see a movie!  And if my hip/glute issue–which has flared up painfully of late–could settle down, some yoga!  And sleep and reading the books I needed to pick up from the library!

So it’s Saturday night, and here’s what’s happened so far:

• At school until 5:30 on Friday for the Snork Maiden’s rehearsal, then home to a quiet evening of reading and websurfing.
• Fantastic massage this morning which has really helped the hip/glute thing.  (I saw a doctor last week and she referred me for physical therapy, but the first appointment isn’t for another ten days or so.)  Hit the library and Target on the way back.
• Took the Snork Maiden for a haircut.  She needs driving practice, so she drove us from there to SA, where she had three hours of rehearsal.
• While she rehearsed, I went to my classroom and did some prep for the week ahead.  I also spent about an hour working on magazine submissions–I haven’t been sending poems out much, and I want to try to place some newer work.
• Then she drove us to the diner where she was meeting her friends, and I popped into the bookstore to get a book for my sister, then I went home to read and chill out until time to pick her up.  I drove us home because it was dark and she’s not used to the highway, but felt hyper-aware that the time of her needing us to drive her everywhere is shortening–she can take the license test next month.  Also remembering so well the stage she has entered of being a junior and having more independence in her social life (even if she is still dependent on us for most transportation–I didn’t get my own license ’til the end of junior year) and also of feeling more settled in my high school life.  She is having a pretty good year so far, I think.  I am savoring it.
• When we came home, I wrote an email to a poet friend who had asked for some feedback on a short manuscript.  I’d given her one deadline for getting the thing together and sent to me, and myself another for replying to her, and we both made our deadlines.
• I had given myself another goal this fall, of drafting a new poem every week for twelve weeks, the draft being due to myself by 2 PM Saturday.  I have produced five drafts so far, but missed the deadline twice, the second time being this week.  There are five weeks left in the plan, though, and I think I would be very happy to go into winter break with ten drafts to work on.  (The plan started in late September and ends a week before break.)

So maybe not a hugely indulgent weekend, especially since I spent a chunk of today on school work and will probably spend another chunk tomorrow (and tomorrow has family obligations as well).  But also not a weekend completely dominated by school things, as some have been and more will yet be (we’ve got that annual admissions open house on an upcoming weekend, and there’s the fall play, too).  A missing piece is spending time with Stubb–he’s working nearly all weekend.  We’ve got plans for next Saturday.

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