Ten Things I'm Looking Forward to this Summer

I'm not going to lie- I have a printed, categorized, to-do list that I carefully prepared a week ago. It's summer break! I have eight weeks off! If you know me in the slightest, or have been reading here for awhile, you know that it's in my nature to see this time as a period requiring hyper-productivity. It's who I am.

Instead of boring everyone with every last entry ("clean out each each junk drawer" and "steam clean carpets"), I thought I'd condense it to the top ten things I'm looking forward to the most:

1. Our trip to Vegas/Zion- fine, that's done already, but it was a great way to see a new place and kick off summer

2. Our trip to the coast- Sawyer and I area staying in Monterey for three nights and plan to hit up Hearst Castle, Big Sur, Carmel-by-the-Sea, and Santa Cruz while we are there. I haven't been to that area in well over a decade, and Sawyer never, so it will be a fun little adventure. 

3. Cleaning every nook and cranny of my house- I'm maybe not looking forward to this, but it will make me feel better

4. Going to the Natural History Museum- Sawyer has developed quite the love of dinosaurs, so we will head out to LA at some point to see them there

5. Beach time- I was able to make a few beach trips last summer and want to get out there at least three or four times this year. It's about an hour each way, so it's not too crazy. Sawyer loves to play in the sand and I love to read while listening to the waves. 

6. Reading reading and reading some more- Self-explanatory, right?

7. Starting my Etsy shop- My goal is to officially open it when I have ten pieces ready to sell. I have two right now, so if I want it to happen at the beginning of next month I need to hustle. 

8. Visiting with my family- My mom and sister are coming down in a few weeks to stay with my grandparents, and my brother and I are trying to plan a day for all of us in San Diego at the zoo. 

9. A cheap bathroom re-fresh- A remodel isn't in the budget right now, so I've brainstormed some things I can do in the master bathroom for under $100ish to get it looking better. Right now I plan to redo all the caulking in the shower, give the walls a fresh coast of paint, and sand down and stain the cabinets. It's going to be quite the project, but I really feel confident I can do it. 

10. See friends- A lot of my friends are teachers, so this is always the perfect time of year to get together with them, since we are all off!

A Quick Trip to Zion

I have always wanted to visit Zion National Park, so when a friend offered me a spot on their Subway Hike (you have to have a permit) I sprung into action trying to figure out how it would work with childcare. Luckily my in-laws live in Vegas, which is on the way, so I was able to drop Sawyer off with them on Wednesday afternoon and then drive two more hours to where my friends were staying, in time for the hike Thursday morning.

I have a weird relationship with hiking- I don't necessarily go our every month or anything, but I've done the laborious trek up to Half Dome in Yosemite twice and have done some local trails. Sawyer and I were also able to explore in Canada last summer, as well (he is part of the reason I don't get to go as often as I'd like, truth be told). I consider myself to be relatively in-shape enough, so I don't balk at the idea of a tough, long hike, even though I'm not out there in the hills super frequently. I don't consider myself experienced, but definitely enthusiastic and willing. 

Given that, for once, I wasn't the one who had to coordinate things (thanks Jeannette and Matt!), I sort of didn't look into this one much before I went, other than just some of the basics. My friends had already done it and assured me I'd be fine, so that was good enough for me! Unfortunately, what I couldn't have predicted was coming down with a cold the day before I left California. It started out as a sore throat and turned into a fever on the drive to Nevada. I shrugged it off, took some Dayquil, and just planned on being better the next day. Spoiler alert: not quite.

We started hiking around 6:30 in the morning and climbed down to the bottom of a canyon- it was absolutely beautiful and the weather was perfect. It was a really steep, rocky descent and I was definitely concerned about the way back, but what can you do? After about an hour and a half of hiking we took a break and I was feeling like absolute crap- my fever was clearly back. I seriously considered quitting, having them drop a pin at my location and pick my up in like six hours. Fortunately, my friend had Aleve, and within twenty minutes I had a renewed pep in my step and was good to go. That girl is a lifesaver, I'm telling ya. 

We hiked to the Subway part, which was also our turnaround, and it was absolutely beautiful. I fell multiple times on the slippery rocks on the way there, so I was bruised and scraped up quite a bit, but it was still really pretty and it was so nice to just sit there and relax. 

The way back we tried to stay in the super shallow river (?) water, which was never higher than out hips, mostly mid-calf. It was a more direct route and was cooler, since we started getting the sun. There were hundreds of little toads jumping around, which were super cute.

The killer was hiking out of the canyon- it was thirty minutes of torture. I can't even count how many four-letter words I dropped, dripping in sweat and with my heart rate at like 165. But, we did it! And, despite the hiccups, I'm really glad I was able to push myself. I haven't done something super physical and challenging in a long time, so I was really proud of myself. Most of the hikes I have done in the past have really clearly marked trails, but this one was rough- we were constantly climbing over rocks and finding our way. It was different, in a good way.

After the hike (about 10ish miles and 9 hours) I basically got right back in the car and drove back to Vegas to relieve my in-laws. It was a really hard drive back- I was tired, I was still not feeling great, and I was in this weird state of starving and not wanting to eat, which I find typical of myself after I do something that requires a lot of endurance. I had to stop a few times to get out and stretch, since my legs were cramping up and I got sleepy.

I'm back home, getting over my soreness (my legs, my arms, my chest....), but I am so glad I was able to go. The company was excellent, the scenery was unlike my normal trips, and it was a nice break away from home. I really feel like it's important to push yourself- it would have been so easy to bail on the trip when I started to feel sick, but I knew I could do it. And I did. 

Box-o-Books 2019

For the past few years I bribe myself to get through the end of the school year craziness with a box of books. This year I saved some Amazon gift cards and also grabbed some desk copies that I might consider using in my classroom one day from a publishing company. All of these books cost me less than $25 out of pocket- not too shabby. 

A lot of these have been on my wish list for several months and I was being good and saving them for the occasion, so I'm proud of my self-control. I've actually bought only six books for myself so far this year, which is goddamn miracle, if I do say so myself. I'm trying to get my TBR pile down to 80 books by the end of the year, although this new stack of reads doesn't really help that situation.

I definitely don't plan to read all of them this summer, since I have some other books I've been waiting for summer to read. I know I will definitely get to Norwegian Wood soon, since we might try to teach it for our IB curriculum. I just started 26 Marathons by runner Meb Keflezighi, since I always find these sorts of books inspiring, exercise-wise. The Farm has gotten a ton of buzz lately, so I'll probably get through that as well. After that? Who knows. Whatever I'm in the mood for. 

Have you read any? What are you reading this summer? 

The Week that Nearly Killed Me

Maybe I'm exaggerating, but dang. It's been touch and go.

Last weekend was on the lighter side of busy, so I was just at my typical level of tired to start the week. Monday I chaperoned the Disneyland trip for our senior class, which meant over 25,000 steps walked and not going to bed until 1 am Tuesday morning (was past my bedtime). I was then up at 5:30 to teach all day, and then the same for finals Wednesday and Thursday. Wednesday night was also graduation, along with dinner with a friend afterward.

Did I mention the grading? Ugh. 

I was actually fairly caught up, but because our turnaround time for grading finals and submitting the semester marks is ridiculously short, I was pretty slammed. A few times I fantasized about leaving all my work in my car with the doors open at night in front of my house, hoping someone would steal them (even safe neighborhoods have theft, right?). Nonetheless, it all got graded.

I also had to rush to finish our book club book yesterday too, which meant finishing the book about two hours before lunch, during my prep period. Clearly I am learning from my students. I prefer to finish the day before so I can let things sort of percolate before discussing, so I didn't feel like my contributions were very articulate. Granted there were only two other teachers there besides me, so it didn't really matter. But still. 

Today I worked to clean my classroom for like four hours and ran around campus taking stuff to my car, chatting with colleagues, and finishing up our checkout procedures. 

But, really, there was so much good in the crazy. Disneyland was SO MUCH FUN. The two parks were virtually empty (this NEVER happens) so my friend and another colleague that joined us were able to go on a ton of rides between the two parks. Sawyer has had a blast at school this week as they kick off their summer curriculum (will water day excitement ever wear off? I think not) and has started talking about how happy he is about kindergarten in a few months (he's been a little anxious about switching classes). I've seen so many of my friends this week and have been able to catch up on their lives. Graduation is always such an important day, both in terms of seeing what the kids and teachers have done during the school year. Oh, and the weather is finally warm and when I checked my air conditioner the other day to make sure it was still working after a long winter, both units fired up immediately (this seems so minor, but our units are getting older and those suckers are pricy). I've had some epiphanies about things I can do on the cheap around the house, as well, and we all know how much I love a good project.

But now, Friday afternoon? I am genuinely concerned about my ability to hoist my body of the couch when need be. 

I'll be back soon to regular posting! I have a whole bunch of new books to share, as well as some books I'm excited about reading this fall. 

May Reviews

Admittedly, I didn't read quite as much as I usually do or would have wanted to this month, but that's life! Busy at home, busy at work, you know the drill... Here's what I did get through-

I tackled the other two plays in Sophocles' Theban series, getting through Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus. I wrote more about how much I have grown to appreciate the trilogy here. 

I read two novels as well, Dave Eggers' Heroes of the Frontier and Eleanor Morse's White Dog Fell From the Sky. The Egger's book is about a divorced mother who has recently lost her dentistry practice and takes her two young kids to Alaska to drive around in an old motorhome. It's a tragi-comic, episodic account of her experiences there, and is well-written, of course (it is Eggers, after all). It just wasn't a good fit reading-wise for me when I read it, so it took me awhile. It probably could have been a shorter and would have been easier to tackle. At times it felt like my journey reading it was as meandering as hers driving, but not in a good way.

 The Morse novel was excellent, a story about a young man named Isaac who escapes South Africa to Botswana only to be accused of being someone he is not. The novel parallels his story with his employer, Alice's, who is having a bit of an early mid-life crisis, and ends up becoming more involved in her gardener's life than she would have ever thought. It was one of those books where I'd sit down to start reading and be surprised at how far I'd gotten and how long I spent when I finally checked the time. It was excellent. 

902 pages