#MTBOSBlaugust Day 3: Celebrating Summer

I tend to think that it's less that teachers get summers off, they just control their own hours.  Sure, I'm not working 40 (60....80....) hours a week in the summer and fighting rush hour traffic home, but there is rarely a day that goes by without my doing something school related and often entire weeks are spent in professional developments or conferences.  Last summer I only had 2 weeks "off" and they were the week of my wedding and the week of my honeymoon. But in the summer, my life is definitely not controlled by bells and for that I'm thankful. Choosing when to snack, when to use the bathroom, when to check my emails- it's liberating. This summer, for the first time in my teaching career, I've not gotten a paycheck or worked in a supervisory role of kiddos in any way. I've taken the time to do a whole lot of things that I haven't in summers past and I am feeling completely reenergized! Now that the end is in sight, my school-related work time is amping up and my control of my own hours are winding down. Just as my body (and my dog) re-learns how to sleep past 6 am, I have start slowly reconditioning it to 4:30 am alarms.

So in celebration of my first non-teacher teacher summer, here are my favorite highlights of the summer. I have....

• Slept on an air mattress for almost 3 weeks
• Moved 778 miles (into an apartment sight unseen....it turned out awesome thankfully)
• Eaten my way through my new town at amazing new places
• Learn to navigate said new town without a GPS
• Introduced my dog to squirrels (our neighborhood in NC didn't have them) and watched her mind explode with possibilities. She has tried to climb multiple trees. 

  

  First sniffs above the Mason Dixon

• Actually gotten close to having all my paperwork in my married name, if that's possible
• Bought real grown up furniture from somewhere without "-kea" or "-arget" anywhere in their names
• Learned to apply false eyelashes
• Learned to properly fill in my eyebrows
• Finally watched Game of Thrones. All of it. In 3 weeks. 
• Developed a (somewhat regular) gym routine
• Visited my alma mater with the hubs and immediately took on personalities of nerdy old couple that asked undergrads to take pictures of us, marveled how everything changed

  

  My house for a glorious 12 months of college

• Discovered spiralizing zucchini was a thing
• Read for leisure
• Watched an entire season of The Bachelorette. Knew it was stupid. Loved it anyway. 
• Almost mastered making homemade ravioli
  
• Celebrated our first wedding anniversary 
• Bought a huge floppy summer hat, even though my head is too big for almost any women's hat
  
• Donated my last article of clothing left over from high school....finally.
• Lived close enough to family to actually have a family barbecue, just because it's Sunday. 
• Been able to call a barbecue a barbecue without being told it's a cookout (Sorry, NC)
• Actually got to go to my niece's 2nd birthday party
  
• Got my niece to voluntarily say my name, even if it's "tait-yn" right now
• Eaten way too much NY pizza and bagels (hence previously mentioned gym routine)

It's nice to take some time to rejuvenate and do things you love during such a big, exciting summer. Ready to jump into a new and challenging school year at a new school, but definitely going to miss such a life-changing summer.