What do you DO on Christmas Break??

The above is the question I get asked, second only to: "What do you DO on Summer Break."  For those of you who don't know, I am a teacher.  Let me explain this to you.

First, I am a teacher of adults. This is very fun for me, because you can laugh when they say something sarcastic and/or inappropriate and no one gets in trouble or has to go to the principals office.  And although they sometimes take less monitoring than small children, when you are a teacher, what you DO during the school year is pour your entire heart and soul into the people asking you for help.  You also pour your heart and soul into those students who don't want your help.  You are basically a mother, counselor, friend, coach, cheerleader, and on and on to all of your students. Does this sound exhausting?  No?

Second, I am also the one who manages two locations and three programs total.  My DH put it best when he told someone, "She kind of runs her own business, because she markets her sites and does the advertising and recruiting, as well as managing a small staff."  Add these two things together and what you get is....

Something REALLY rewarding!  I am in no way complaining about being a teacher.  What I am saying, though, is that there is plenty to do on breaks.  PLENTY!

So, what do I do???
What I DO is take care of stuff around the house.  I clean and grocery shop and make all the meals, so that my DH can have a break too.  I try to tackle a few things on my own to do list! (Must clean out closet.  Must switch to winter clothes.  Must hang pictures that have been sitting by the wall for 6 months now.)  Also, it's the holidays!  So I do holiday stuff like travel home, buy gifts, make baked goods for gifts, entertain my darling niece and nephew, and so on.  Sometimes, I write blog posts. =) During the summer, I travel.  I read for pleasure.  

In short, what we teachers DO over breaks is recharge our hearts and souls, so that we can go back to work renewed and refreshed, and ready to take on a new challenge.  Please, please dear readers, don't ask teachers what they do with their time off.  From now on, you can only ask me.

What am I doing right now?  Waiting on laundry.  Because yesterday I refused to do laundry even though the mountain of laundry was threatening to collapse and bury me under a very large avalanche.  If no one hears from me today, check under the giant pile of laundry.

The lost and the listless

Something strange happened to me last year, and I'm not sure what.  I do feel like I'm just waking up from a weird dream.  Last year I pretty much stopped doing all the things I loved.  I didn't read a lot or write.  I didn't shoe shop (gasp) or enjoy basketball. (double gasp) I didn't run a single race and logged less than 10 miles for the whole year.

I think I took a vacation from being me.

I'm not sure where I got lost, or even what happened.  I'm working on figuring that out.  I'm even less sure that anyone noticed but me.  Although this is sad in it's own way, I think it is telling of my relationships and how much I keep to myself.  More self reflection needed here.

On the plus side, I'm starting to feel like me again.  I'm starting to feel like traveling and exploring and reading and writing.  I've been watching and enjoying basketball!  I recently fell in love, I mean hard core love here people, with a pair of shoes. (I bought them.)

Long story short, thanks for bearing with me, readers, as I use this gardening platform to fall in love with writing again.  :)

The Demise of the Gardenerd

The end of this blog came about rather suddenly.  Once I didn't have a garden and/or time to garden, it became difficult for me to decide what to write about.  I was busy with grad school, adjusting to a new job, dealing with my plot of land being taken over by persons who still remain unnamed.  =) I have since stopped going to grad school, and am unsure what direction I will turn to next in the career and/or school department.  At the end of the day, though, I'm still passionate about growing my own food.

Another year of gardening has wrapped up, this year with neither me nor my DH having time to give our poor plot of land the attention it deserves.  I'm going to try harder next year to make it work.  I've got to get a drip system in for this to be successful, as I travel so much in the summer.  I will do my best to have a plan in place by summer, or at the least a plan to not travel as much!

In the meantime, if anyone is still reading, this blog will shift away from gardening for a while.  It will be a little more random, if that's possible.  Thanks for sticking with me, and please let me know if there is anything you'd like me to write about in the meantime!