My last day of teaching this semester was on Thursday. I administer and grade the final exam this week and hold a couple of office hours, too. I also have a few duties for my grad fellowship to finish up. But my own classes and papers are all finished and turned in. I haven't been this un-busy since January.
So this morning was the very first time in my whole life that I sent both girls to school and had almost nothing to do beyond my responsibilities to my own household (during other semester breaks, one or both of the girls has been out of school). It was glorious. I kind of puttered around for about fifteen minutes, flitting from task to task, not sure what I wanted to settle my time on. Then I put on an audiobook and spent two hours cleaning up the sundry messes and piles that have accumulated around the house over the past three weeks. I was so busy during those weeks that I put unorganized piles on shelves and didn't keep up with sorting the kids' artwork and schoolwork (you have to stay on top of that or it takes over your whole house) and stopped making sure the storage area remained navigable and that the junk pile in the laundry room got put away every once in a while. It all had to wait until LATER, and later is now.
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| The artwork pile. |
I'm not done yet. But two hours made a decent dent. And after those two hours, I took a nap.
I can't wait to tackle all the other household projects that I've been putting off until "later." It's going to be a great couple of weeks until my summer course starts up, and I hope I can make the most of it.