Shortest. Summer. Ever

Today finds me at my first day back to work after waaaay too short a summer "break." It's been exactly one month since Relay, and I only had one free week before that, so all in all this was the shortest summer I've ever had as an educator.

I have our new calendar to blame. After a series of discussions and votes, the fellow teachers in the district, for reasons I can't fathom, chose a calendar for the next two years that has us starting back with the students over a week earlier than any year since I've been here. That would be all fine and dandy with me if it meant we finished before Memorial Day like every school around us does, but it doesn't mean that. Instead, we get a fall break. A fall break that will be great fun for me, since I can't go anywhere or do anything because Ainsley does not get this same break at her school and Jason will have to work. (Hold the sarcasm, that actually does sound fun!) But I would much rather us get out early next summer.

I can also blame a snafu with our district's big professional development workshop for me coming back so early. See, I technically shouldn't be here. Even with my extended employment, I shouldn't have to start until next Monday. But I found out right after we got home from Disney that I would be responsible for helping with the technology for that workshop this week. It's a long story as to why this got sprung on me, and I am extremely bitter about it, so I am going to just let that one lie (lay?) lest I go on a tirade that just leaves me feeling more depressed than I already am.

How did I spend my last weekend of this short summer? Ainsley did a program at a local recreation center Friday night for a few hours that gave Jason and I a chance to be alone. We were all excited about it: 4 hours to do what we want! When hubby got home, we discussed our possibilities, and decided on a nice Mexican restaurant a little too nice to take Ains. Barely two streets away from home, while a sudden rain was pelting the windshield, I heard myself saying, "Or, we could just stay home and order pizza and have the house to ourselves..." Pitiful, I know. The next thing I knew I was standing at the refrigerator, pizza ordered and on the way, Netflix rental we've been sitting on for approximately a decade waiting to have time to watch cued up in the DVD player, contemplating whether or not the $7 bottle of Chardonnay I had dipped into for a chicken dish the night before would go well with string cheese. (It did.) Ahh, the life of a grown-up.

Then I got up insanely early to run a 5K with the hubby that I wasn't very well prepared for and that has left every muscle below my hips crying with pain today.

And yesterday I just sat around the house, mourning the end of a summer that had barely begun.

But as I write it is 3:00, and my first day back is over. The first day is always the hardest; from there, it becomes routine. Like prison.