An unfortunate turn of events….(life)

I came back to my apartment tonight, after being away for what seems like the whole month of August, with plans to get myself ready for the school year. My graduate classes begin on Tuesday and I will be working on setting up my first grade classroom most of next week, so now is the time. All day, I have been composing mental lists of important things to do to help me be really ready for next week. In my mind, tonight, I was going to: balance checkbook, pay bills, create literacy check off sheet that will allow me to quickly know exactly what skills each of my students have developed and change my life as a teacher, organize all of my important papers from the past few semesters that I want to have as a reference in my classroom this year, and mop my kitchen. [Just so you know, I have yet to learn to break my to do lists into manageable elements. My lists typically represent some type of major life change that I am convinced I can undertake in 2-3 business days.]

For my first two hours at home, I checked in with my favorite websites and decided between seeing a movie at a coffee shop or a sculpture garden this week. Now that it is 10:30 and I am feeling ready to begin one of these projects, I realized three things that do not make me happy.

• Number one: I am no longer on my teacher’s clock. All summer, I kind of stayed in the wake up and go to bed early mode. Now, with 1.5 weeks left to go, I’ve flipped things around. I have returned to my night-owlish self. I like to be awake, listening to crickets and quiet streets. This is far from perfect timing for this to happen. Soon, I am going to have to be engaging and uber-aware of many wiggly children at 8 a.m.
• Number two: My to do lists are too long. I’m going to have to reevaluate.
• Number three: I have managed to separate myself from my toothbrush again. This is the second time in one month that I have placed many miles between myself and my toothbrush. This time, it never made it’s way back into my bathroom bag that has been with me since August 9^th. Last time, it fell out of the belt of these Thailand pants I was wearing and I didn’t feel it slip out. I feel bad for the person who sells me my third toothbrush of August in the morning. I’m going to go rinse.