It would seem that one of the beauties of what many consider a profession that is not a "real" job would be the many breaks we receive as teachers. Time off at Thanksgiving; Winter Break (nee Christmas); Spring Break (a week in March) and, the pseudo-glorious coup de gras...Summer Break.
The reality is that, even though someone over Winter Break told me my job must be "super-fun, playing with kids all day long," the transitions back into work after even a weekend can be difficult. After more than a week, good luck. If people really understood how much kids' learning regressed over the Summer, they would have all the evidence they needed for ditching the antiquated agrarian calendar. But that is for another day....
For this Spring Break, I let the beard flow, growing shaggy without daily combing, and watched as it gave velcro-grip to my pillow and pretty much everything else it encountered: shirts, zippers, guitar strings, etc. It did keep my face warm as we celebrated our older daughter's seventh birthday on ice (at a local ice skating rink's free-skate.) And, of course, people generally steered clear of me.
In keeping with a semi-annual Spring Break tradition, I managed to score a sweet batch of poison ivy from our backyard. I wasn't even within 200 feet of the actual vine, but such is my allergy that I can seemingly contract it from the random thoughts that may fall on the vine. Enjoy a close-up below:
Pretty gruesome, I know. Such are the maladies of we sufferers, but bonus that there is a nice beard-shot in the background.
No comments:
Post a Comment