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It's not raining today, but it is a Monday.
Being a teacher who is home for the summer, I don't dread Mondays the way I do during the school year. No alarm. Nothing that I have to get up to do. It's really quite nice to get up whenever I wake up, feed the dog, have breakfast and make list of things to do that day.
I'm certain that those of you with "real" jobs are jealous at the moment, but I'd like to remind you that during the school year on any given weekday I arise at 5:00 am in an effort to get in a workout before I leave for work. The classroom of 16 five year olds with paintbrushes can be a dangerous and exhausting place; when I come home I don't have the energy to lift weights. And I usually have acquired some form of decoration on my clothing...
This past school year was the first year I'd taught at the elementary level. I'd spent six years in an inner city middle school teaching grade 6-8. It didn't take long to learn that kindergarten and first graders do not watch where they are going, especially when they are carrying a painting.
I came home early in the school year to discover when I changed my clothes that there had been a bright red line on my rear-end. Most of us would assume that we had sat in something. This is a reasonable assumption in any art room, especially a K-6 classroom where students had been painting that day. The only problem with that assumption is the part that involves sitting down; this is not something I do on a regular basis. I was racking my brain trying to remember when I had sat down at all during the day, besides lunch, when I realized that the line, if I was still wearing my skirt, would be at just the right height for eye-level of a kindergartener. That's when it occurred to me that one of my five year olds must have walked right into the back of me while bringing his/her painting to the drying rack. I also learned to check the back of my clothes as well as the front for stains to pre-treat in the laundry. This was not something I had to do as a middle school teacher.
Today's list of stuff to do involves cleaning out closets. Still jealous?