After uploading grades and finalizing details from the semester, we turned our attention to cleaning the house -- as in, deep cleaning the house -- to prepare for a four-day house rental over graduation weekend. During the rental we lived out of suitcases at my in-laws, where the girls, true to form, increased the noise level of their house ten-fold. On Saturday afternoon I spoke at a Mother's Day banquet. After church on Sunday the day slipped by as we watched soccer practice, played at a park, and followed the girls as they looped through the neighborhood on scooters and Big Wheels.
To kick back, on Sunday night I finished reading the second book in The Hunger Games series, after which I dreamed I was hunting mutant squirrels in a forest with blow darts concocted from pipe cleaners and flexible straws. (Industrious, but not at all lethal.)
Today, we moved back into our house. Even though our unpacked bags are standing at attention near the steps and a mountain of laundry awaits me upstairs, a sense of calm has settled over the house, over me.
I've realized something: this rental definitively marked the end of the semester. It was the final period after a sixteen-week paragraph, the turning point when I could let down my guard, skip a day of checking email (unheard of during the semester), read fiction (fiction!), and spend an hour coloring with chalk on the sidewalk with my girls without the lingering suspicion that I really ought to be working.
I like this.
I like this a lot.
The best part of our jobs is the flexibility at this time of year! The kids are finally old enough to understand this time of the year I am all (almost!) theirs.
ReplyDeleteThank you for reminding us about the simple pleasures. I've got a terrible habit of saying these things must wait because of dishes or laundry or this or that...but truly I need to focus on my family and children and just sit for a moment and be content!
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