Summar Slump

Today is my first official day of summar.  No, that's not a spelling error; only pronouncing it "summar" gives summer the proper amount of simultaneous excitement and dread that a single teacher like me experiences at the start of this season each year.

One of the reasons you become a teacher, apart from wanting to help kids and stuff, is the guaranteed vacation time: three days at Thanksgiving, two weeks at Christmas, a week for spring break, and a little more than two months off every summer.  What they don't tell you is that you won't be able to survive in the teaching profession without all that time away all the demands of the job.  And they definitely won't tell you about the summer slump.

In my first several years of summer vacation as a teacher, I didn't have this sense of dread.  I went into summer like a kid, excited about spending time at the pool, sleeping in, and hanging out with my friends.  I spent those first few summers as a seasonal alcoholic with friends who were still in undergrad, grad school or who were just loafing about until they figured out life.  That kind of stuff is still socially acceptable when you're 24. Not so much when you're 31.

The further you get away from college, the fewer friends you have who are able to hang out with you in the middle of the day.  It can become a lonely, lonely time filled with conversations with your cat, not-showering and sleeping like a factory worker on the night shift.  You can really lose your sense of time, place and self.  Sure, there are other teachers you could hang out with, but the truth is that as much as you need a break from students, you also kind of need a break from coworkers by the time June rolls around.  There's also the high probability that most of those coworkers have children, which greatly affects either the activities available or their available time.

And the older you get, the more you realize that you really should be spending some of that down time taking care of adult responsibilities like getting your oil changed in your car because it probably resembles hot fudge by this point.  I'm not sure if this habit comes from my Midwestern mother who has probably the craziest work ethic on the planet, but summer has become a time of goals for me.  Goals I rarely accomplish, but goals nonetheless.  Here are this summer's goals to meet some adult responsibilities and stay busy enough to avoid the summer slump:

Lose the weight I gained over the course of the school year
This school year I made the decision to sponsor the student council at our high school.  It was an effort to find a new challenge, and, boy, did I find one.  The magnitude of what I'd taken on hit me sometime in September, which is when I started stress eating and avoiding the gym because of sheer exhaustion by the time I left work.  By the end of the year, it was a rewarding experience; however, I carry around a pound to help me remember each of my StuCo officers.  As much as I want to remember those kids, I don't need to carry around the extra baggage.

Use all of the Groupons and gift certificates I've accumulated 
Here's more of a glimpse into my neuroses--I have five Google calendars, people.  Five. One for student council--coded green.  One for work appointments--coded blue.  One to schedule in grading time because it's impossible to get all the grading of an English teacher completed during school hours--coded red.  One for training (clearly I didn't stick to that one very well this year)--coded orange.  And, finally, one for my own social calendar--coded purple.  While I am able to be social during the school year, it takes a lot of planning to make it happen and it's difficult to squeeze in unexpected events sometimes.  And my eyes are bigger than the free space in my calendar.  This year I've purchased Groupons for Dolce Vita (eek!  It expires tomorrow!), The Melting Pot, and a pottery class for two.  I've also been gifted a generous gift certificate for cooking classes at The Silver Whisk and a gift card for an Aveda salon.  Time to mark those things on my calendar!

Write more
When I started this blog, I set some goals for myself, none of which I've met.  It's time to finally write the saga of Hotel San Jose, for cryinoutloud.

Read more
Through the accountability of my book club and a long-distance friend, I've managed to read a few books over the course of the school year.  But now it's time to devour them.  Some of my favorite summers have consisted of me and a series of books keeping each other company until the wee hours of the morning.  It's time to curl up with David Sedaris, Margaret Atwood, and many others to have a giant literary orgy again.

Ensure that I no longer have summers off
I'm sure there are people reading this who hate me a little for complaining about summer.  All I can tell you is that I hope to no longer have summer vacation by the end of this summer break.  My plan is to spend at least part of each day working to find a new job (today I bookmarked a bunch of jobs for which I'll be applying in the coming week--check!).  As much as I've loved the creative aspects of teaching, enjoyed the relationships I've formed, honed my craft, and developed a love/hate relationship with summers, it's time for me to try something new.  At least until I long for summers again.

The Pity Party

The other day I was at Kohl's, hunting for items to use up the $50 gift card I'd bought for a friend who snubbed her nose at it, thus granting me the permission to shop for myself.  Recently, I've been spending a lot more time at home in the kitchen and have realized that my past failures (leaving pans "soaking" in the sink for a week, burning the bottom of pots, scrapping Teflon off the bottom of pots with metal utensils, you know...) have led to a lack of necessary tools.

It occurred to me as I perused the housewares section and looked at prices that most people my age already have a healthy stock of items like a mandolin, a garlic press, a salad spinner, fork tongs, and other devices that I've never purchased for myself.  I've been cooking for years with 1 frying pan, 1 13"x9" pan, 1 sauce pot, 1 soup pot, 1 ladle, 1 slotted spoon, 1 spatula, 1 whisk--you get the idea.  It's bare essentials in my tiny apartment kitchen.  The few extra items I own are a cheese grater and some plastic-like mat you put on the bottom of a cookie sheet to keep cookies from burning, both of which were purchased from the dollar bins at Target.

Suddenly, a wave of jealousy ran over me as I stared at different sized CorningWare.  All those lucky bastards who got married got to register for these items.  All those homeowners got to have housewarming parties and beg for these items.

But not me.

I remembered an episode of Sex and the City in which Carrie finally became fed up with buying her girlfriends expensive gifts for engagements, weddings, bridal showers, bachelorette parties, baby showers and housewarming parties.  She finally decided it was her turn and registered for expensive shoes.

I like her thinking.  But I don't just want the stuff, and a little payback from all those friends who I adorned with gifts for the last decade--I want the party.

By the age of, say, 35, people who are spouseless, houseless, childless and everythingless should be entitled to throw a pity party.  Our friends and family get to acknowledge that they actually do feel kind of bad for us.  And we finally get to acknowledge that the single life with all this freedom isn't all it's cracked up to be.  We get to register for the items that we never bought for ourselves, but more importantly, we get to have a huge blow out to celebrate the lives we've led without all of those other celebrations.

We can celebrate the nights spent curled up on the couch alone.  All the bills we paid all by ourselves.  The number of friends we've managed to find to help us move from apartment to apartment.  The animals who become our companions.  The technology that keeps us entertained and thinly connected to the outside world.  The fact that we've made it this far without breaking down completely or running away and going off the grid.  We can rejoice in it all and the fact that we've come so far with so little change.

And I, myself, will be the life of my own pity party.  Because, really, I'm the only one who knows how much there really is to celebrate.

In 2017, I'll be registered at Target and another to-be-determined location.  It'll be the party of a lifetime.  You're all invited.