From hectic to hopeful

Where are the Spring Breaks of yesteryear? I could really use a week clear of classes to catch up on grading and projects and preps and perhaps even to relax and have some fun, but this year we've been given a single day off to mark the middle of the semester.  I intend to make the most of it, even if that means just loafing around the house and taking a nice walk in the afternoon sunshine. But I can take this time off only because I've spent the past week working like a dynamo, constantly flitting from one activity to another until everything urgent is more or less done. 

In the past week I have written detailed feedback on 35 student drafts, graded nearly 50 midterm exams and essays, prepped and taught all my classes and met one-on-one with some struggling students, chaired a committee meeting and met with the provost regarding the committee's recommendations, and, finally, submitted midterm grades.

At home I've cleaned bathrooms and vacuumed and dusted and prepared the spare rooms for a visit from the kids and grandkids, spent time at the laundromat and the car wash, submitted my tax documents to my tax guy, tossed logs into the wood-burner (and jammed the finger responsible for every "s" I type, ouch), cooked for a crowd and cleaned up afterward (with plenty of help), watched my grandkids toss frisbees and play with Legos and throw a million rocks into the creek, helped them use the binoculars to watch birds at the feeders and enjoyed all their drawings and jokes and hugs.

The biggest and most rewarding task, though, was clearing everything out of the laundry room so my son-in-law could install a new dryer vent and fix the dryer (so that I had to go back to Lowe's yesterday and cancel the order for the new dryer, a task that filled me with glee) and then clean up the mess and reorganize the whole laundry room to make it more user-friendly. Meanwhile, my adorable daughter replaced a light fixture in the hallway (Where did she learn to do these things? Not from me!) so that now all the broken things are fixed and the dryer is no longer vented into the crawl-space.

Oh, and in the middle of all that I drove to Jackson to spend less than 24 hours with my husband and then drove back again through a massive rainstorm that brought flooding to the area, although our property was spared this time. Today I'll take a walk down to the lower meadow and start strategizing how to transform a chunk of former horse pasture into a pollinator habitat, plotting out its boundaries and walkways and plantings. After the hectic week I've had and the storm-tossed anxieties that preceded it, I can't imagine a better way to spend my Spring Break Day than to stand in a meadow envisioning a blooming future full of butterflies and bees.  Tomorrow I'll get back to all the demands of campus life, but just for today I'm cherishing some brief moments of stillness.

The oldest grandchild drew these birds for me.