Spring Break

One of the things that non-teachers don't fully appreciate is spring break. Granted, this year, it's felt a lot like Christmas break never ended, what with snow days seemingly a weekly occurrence, but its arrival is appreciated nonetheless. After the last two weeks of essay scoring, entry approving, and portfolio grading, I'm excited to say that I am not thinking of anything school-related until a week from Sunday.

So what are my plans for this break? Well, for one, I plan to stare at the ocean a great deal. My brother and I are headed out early Sunday morning to spend the week with our parents in their winter condo in Murrells Inlet, SC. After not having been to the beach in nearly a decade, this makes my second trip in eight months. Every time I go, I am reminded of how much I really need time at the ocean on a relatively regular basis. It resets me. It clears my head. It calms my heart. It makes me happy.

But beyond that, I have plans to do three things. In between doing whatever the family does, of course, which will probably include golf, shopping, seeing a show or two, daily walks on the beach, and, of course, eating seafood. That's another reason I love the ocean. Fresh seafood. Not Red Lobster fresh. Actual fresh. Anyway, about those plans...

First, I plan to read. To people who know me, that may seem silly since I am always reading. But vacation reading is so much more joyous than reading at home. I get to do it without the guilt of deciding on sitting down with a good book instead of doing some chore that needs doing around the house. At the beach, the faucet doesn't need fixed. The laundry can wait until I get home. The yard work will still be there when I get back too. I'm taking two book books and my Kindle. I like the convenience of a Kindle, but I love the new book snap and nothing beats that new book smell. The book books are The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon and Mitch Albom's The Time Keeper. On my Kindle, I have, among some classics for backups in case I finish all my planned titles, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, the third in Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy. I've loved the first two and am excited for the finale.


Second, I plan to write. Life has been so incredibly insane for the last two weeks that I have not written one word on my latest work-in-progress. It's not that I haven't wanted to. It's been that being an English teacher with 110 AP Literature students sometimes eats my life. Because we lost so many days to weather, we crammed three practice essays, Macbeth, and an essay test into the last three weeks, along with their portfolio being due at the beginning of this week. Write? I barely had time to go to the bathroom. But this week, grades are all submitted and I promised my kids they would not be getting any responses from me when they email me early stuff for the next portfolio. I am incommunicado. And I'm going to spend a good deal of my time getting re-acquainted with Dee and Harry Shalan and their somewhat-more-romantic albeit slightly dangerous version of good ol' Parkersburg, WV.

And finally, I plan to do some power napping. I find I can't nap on school nights. It's like I have one chance to fall asleep per day and if I waste that on a nap, I will be up half the night, even if it's only a twenty-minute snooze. But I have no such restriction while vacationing. I can nap during the day and still fall blissfully asleep that night. My brain is just more relaxed, especially when the vacation is at the ocean.

So that's the plan. It's ambitious, I know, but I think I'm up to it.