Back to School

The news is all about tax free weekends, school supplies shopping, middle school fashion, how to fit in and how many teachers' jobs have been saved.
It may still be August on the calendar and unbearable on the thermometer, but tomorrow I have to go back to work, and the following Monday the school house will be full of scholars looking good and ready to...text, complain, whine, cheat, wheedle, avoid, delay, and deny.
Another school year is about to begin.
I cannot believe how quickly ten weeks can evaporate under the Texas sun. I've had a great break. I've had trips and seen sights. I've been to movies, lunches, dinners, shopping and to the pool.
I've had all my summer markers: watermelon, cream peas, ice cream, cobbler, hot water cornbread, fried okra, catfish, pizza. It's a good thing I've also gone to water aerobics weekday evenings!
I've knitted, read trashy novels, napped in the afternoons, and I've even prepared materials to use in the classroom. It has been a time of rest and restoration.
But tomorrow inservice begins and I'm ready to roll. This is how I know it isn't time for me to retire. I still want a new first day of school dress. I still want some new pens and a list of the kids who will be in my classes. I still enjoy learning all those names and figuring out all the personalities.
Ten weeks is a long vacation and it's certainly nice to have. It won't be fun to begin waking to an alarm clock again. It will be miserable getting into a car that's over a 100 degrees inside each afternoon to head home. But I have a job. It doesn't come with a pay raise this year. In fact, the increase in health insurance means that the take home will actually be reduced. But, I have a job. Millions of Americans don't this year and the prospects are gloomy for many more.
So tomorrow, no matter how much I may drag my feet when it's time to get up and get in the shower, I'll try to remember how blessed I am to have a job and that it comes with an opportunity to influence the lives of approximately three hundred young people who need to know how the republic is supposed to work for its citizens.