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.