Snow Day

It's 9:12 pm. I've been in bed for about 12 minutes, but I've been in my pajamas for just about 24 hours. That's right, no school today--our first official snow day of the school year, and my first snow day as a teacher. You better believe that teachers get WAY more excited about snow days than students do.

Case in point: Last night, we went to bed knowing we had a 2 hour delay. Getting to sleep in two extra hours was glorious. I woke up without an alarm clock at 7:00, and got out of bed at 7:20. I checked the school closings and Wake County (near Durham/Raleigh) Schools were already closed. I got out of the shower and, with a towel on my head and my pajamas back on, I went out to the living room to complain to my roommate about our misfortune of still having school. At the exact instant that I opened my door, Lojo jumped up from the couch, threw down her cell phone, and went shrieking through the house, screaming, "NO SCHOOL NO SCHOOL NO SCHOOL!" In a panic, I ran behind her, trying to make sure I was hearing her correctly. I had to chase her up the stairs, where she was frantically beating on our other roommates' doors. We danced and screamed and laughed as we watched the snow start falling outside our window onto our frozen pond. This evening, when we got the call that we had a second snow day, I started jumping through the air, doing hurkeys and ice skating on our kitchen floor. If only we had cameras to capture the excitement, our kids would have to agree that teachers are much more appreciative.

Even though I haven't changed my clothes, I've been more productive today than most weekends. We cleaned the whole downstairs before 10:00 am--scrubbing, sweeping, vaccumming, washing, and reorganizing until our kitchen, living room, and bedrooms looked like new. I planned 4 different lessons for tomorrow (which will now function as Monday's lessons), created a fun activity for Tuesday, graded papers, and cooked myself three meals. Tomorrow's agenda: more planning, hopefully to reduce the amount of work to do over break, and just enjoy the time off. Heavens knows we'll probably have to make it up somewhere along the line, so I might as well take what I can get, when I can get it.

Here's to a four day weekend and an impending winter break.