To-Do

Weekends open up with that sweet freshness of potential. They remind me of clean sheets, fresh baked bread, and first snowflakes. I wake on Saturday with near glee because it is the weekend and I can do what-ever-I-want.

What might seem amusing, were it not me, is that my weekend is actually not free. I have all the things I put off throughout the week: laundry, grocery shopping, house cleaning, and, ohhhh, right, grading. At the suggestion of a friend, I now measure my grading in inches, rather than assignments. This weekend was a four inch weekend. Hey, good for me! (It's wise not to worry too much until one passes the 12 inch mark.)

Every Friday I leave school full of enthusiasm that *this weekend* I will come in and reorganize my desk. Yes, this will be the weekend that I finally tackle that filing, that I grade that pile of math homework I forgot about, that yes, I become Super Teacher!

Since I have the attention span of a golden retriever, I promptly forget all of this on Saturday morning. I pop out of bed with a blank, happy mind, ready to go tromp off for something really, really fun. Yay! It is Sat.Ur.Day! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

In a surprise to no one but me, come Sunday morning I resent the weekend and all the cheerful, normal people strolling around my neighborhood. They are walking their dogs and playing with their children, and it makes me hate them just a tiny bit. I also hate the leisurely coffee drinkers at my favorite coffee shop, and I really hate the hikers who are enjoying this bizarrely warm winter we're having. By noon, I find myself just shy of a good, old fashioned hissy fit.

Sometimes this ends badly, wherein I convince myself that I don't really need clean clothes or dishes this week and hey, couldn't I do the grading on Monday morning?

Other times, like this weekend, I pretend I am training for some really tough event, like... joining the Marines... and I push!push!push! all day. It's sort of like doing pull-ups.

I

can eeek

out

one

more

research

paper.

Oof! Done!

At the end of these weekends, I wait patiently for my medal ceremony. Someone is going to praise my efforts, right? You know, give me a gold star? A cookie? A sticker?

No?

Oh.

Given that gold stars have yet to materialize, and my sanity is somewhat thinning, I changed my weekend to-do lists. These new lists are full of things that I have to do, and things I want to do, and a few somewhere in between. Even better, I get to color things in when I finish them. With colored pencils, you guys. Nothing says Accomplishment like coloring in the "clean kitty litter pan" with bright pink pencil. And this weekend, I have a few things I'm feeling particularly proud of. In no specific order, I get to color in the following:

Going to the Farmer's Market

Trapeze with a friend

Folding laundry

Grading four inches of papers

Finally cleaning the dishes that took over the kitchen

Sending out the recommendations

Reading a new, good book (that was not written for people under the age of 13)

Making peace with an ex

Buying hamster food

Singing in the car

There was more.

But really, that was enough.

Futures

"I am patient," I wrote in my cover letter for an elementary teaching position some eleven years ago this week. My proofreader - my mom - laughed out loud when she reached that line.

"I mean, I think it's possible," I stammered in response. "I am sure being a teacher will make me more patient... Do you need a glass of water? No? Can you stop laughing, please?"

It's no surprise, then, that I am waiting (terribly) this cold January. Technically, I haven't been waiting long. It's just since December, just until February. Or March. Or the near end of March. Not that I'm counting.

At the same time, I've been waiting for nearly a decade. I was twenty-two, celebrating good news with a solo Thai dinner in Albuquerque. I unfolded my futures over crispy spring rolls and green chicken curry. In my hand I held the option I wanted most of all. I smoothed it out, flashed it like a sparkly new ring, and decided not yet.

I like the other futures that opened out after that night. One led me to a teaching certificate, a Master's degree, a professor who handed me Annie Dillard and told me I had a true voice as a writer. The next future took me to a tiny island off the coast of Maine, a one room schoolhouse, two years of loss and grief after my mother died. Another led me to Pennsylvania, then back home, then through the rabbit hole of friends and passions and a beautiful lilac-scented new life.

It's beautiful, this life I have now. Sun-struck and full of joy, even on days like today with too many meetings and too much grading and children who ate way, way, way too much sugar. (Whatever scientist said sugar doesn't affect children deserves to be locked in a classroom after a birthday party celebration.)

Beautiful. Joyful. Good.

And yet...

I'm waiting for the future I didn't take nine years ago. I'm waiting, impatiently, terribly, waiting, to see if this time it's mine.

Intentions

I have a theory about New Year's Day. I think the way I enter a year shapes what follows. It is just another day, usually one that arrives after a late night, and yet... its very newness makes it delicate. The day, the year seems to open like a butterfly drying its just hatched wings. How could the first day not set the tone for the year that follows?

Last year, I welcomed the new year by walking over to my work, which handily (or not) happens to be in my backyard. The parking lot was full; my colleagues, elementary school teachers, were working in their classrooms. Yes, it was a day off, a national holiday, and yet there they were - making bulletin boards and grading papers.

I brought mimosas. Nothing says "Happy New Year!" like sharing cold prosecco and orange juice at work, right? It would have been more festive had anyone actually taken me up on my cheery beverages. Alas, everyone declined because they were too busy working.

And that, in a nutshell, sums up my year.

This year, I went to the ocean. It was a match of joy struck in my heart when I say the waves nudged against the horizon. I was so excited I gamboled around my friend, running in circles, dashing off to the waves and then skipping back again. She drily noted that the newly arrived golden retrievers on the beach were doing the same thing.

We walked and talked. I danced back from waves, tromped along seagull prints, and found a stone that looks like sunshine. I filled my head with sand and salt air and light.

Usually, the long drive to my new home, a verdant valley, is full of melancholy. It is ... hard... to leave behind friends, the ocean, history, family, even when there is so much to love in my adopted home.

This day?

It was lit with possibilities, with contentment, with ease. I may not know what will come in this year. Truthfully, this year I can't even pretend to know what will come. I do know there will be friends, and the ocean, and happiness. It's a small start, but it's just enough for now.

PS: Should you happen to be driving to the ocean in a contemplative mood, I highly recommend playing "The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack" by Liars. (With thanks to Kelly for putting them first on her Best of 2011 mix.)