Downtime meets Uptown

Summer from the other side is so much better. I am a 7th grade teacher in her first summer off. If you are a teacher or know any intimately, you know that the single worst degradation of our profession are those four words - flippantly (read: jealously) delivered: You have summers off!

Well let me tell you, I wouldn't have survived the year without the promise of that summer off. The job is tough, and summers off are necessary moments of rest and breath on the hike up Everest. So it's in this context, within the long, drowsy, lovely big-bear yawn and stretch part of the year, that I begin writing. So I may sound lazy.

Highlights of down time thus far:

Greenwich Village dancing till 4 with fellow teaches - I love meeting old man hippie bands!

Doing laundry (first time by myself in the city, i swear we need a "lifestyle laundry" in upper manhattan where i can get a massage or maybe a iced coffee while your clothes spin. Instead i have to swoop on a seat, risk looking like a yuppie with my choice of laundry room literature, walk around the street posturing toughness so I can ignore the homeless - giving makes you look weak, and order coffee in fake Spanish "eh, cafe por favor, eh.. no, no light and sweet). You get the idea. Will is so much better at it than I am.

Home time in Michigan playing with the kids and seeing all the family I could. And there was that stumble back to the old gay bar that has served me since I was 16. Thank god for the nice gay man of a certain age who took Carl and I under his wing and drove our drunk asses home. Yay for being the only ones on the dance floor and embarrassing, sloppy exits!

Teaching my Dad about the blasphemous irregardlessly. "I'm not an English major." (My Dad's a very bright guy, engineering type, systematic thinking). I'm not either, Dad. But irregardlessly is a diagnosis term for adult retardation.

Running the air conditioner on full blast - Al Gore be damned, you don't live on the 4th floor. And huddling in with Will in a cool apt.

Small favors equal saviors. More on the summer of love soon.