Exceptional happened.
It is a week later (now posted a few weeks after THAT) and I am now in the beginning, again, of life post-D.C.. It is slow in coming to me, as I have forgotten a lot of things that didn't revolve around the trip. All around me in the apartment is evidence that I have been busy. Nothing is in total shambles, but I have work to do in order to make my apartment seem like a hospitable place to be. Currently, windows open, rainy weather here, it is a quiet summer shelter for a very tired me.
'The third time is the charm' is technically true when I consider leading the trip. I've been to D.C. 4 times in the last few years, but the first time, I got sick. Really, altogether digustingly sick....I couldn't go to school for four days after the trip. I had pink eye and maybe some bronchitis? Certain elements of that trip are a little hazy, but really, the morning we woke up at 3:00 am to meet luggage and parents and kids at school, the pit in my stomach was gone.
What a relief.
Today two really wonderful things happened. Maybe we could say three wonderful things. Or maybe as I'm sitting down to write about it, I see the rest of a long line of wonderful stretching out in front of me.
I finished all grades, all quarters, all year updates. Finally. I am done with it.
Yesterday was such a huge mix of everything all at once...I think I was just partly there amidst the craziness of signing yearbooks and ending it with the crowd. But today I sat in the quiet, quiet school, finally finishing those last small things at my trusty desk. And it was the real closure I had been waiting for.
To mark this, I had a dance party in my classroom. Probably some couldn't imagine me doing this, but I blasted music, and it felt appropriate and good and funny to be dancing like a maniac in the place where I have literally stood to teach all year. Heather sent me an e-mail that said she imagined me running out of the school throwing paper and screaming, and I suppose this was my version of that kind of joy.
It was another one of those nights where I stayed super late and the custodians swept around me and I kept working. The next thing, the next thing, the next thing. I made myself eat, and not completely forget I had a body that needed some care, and I kept repeating things to myself about how the perk of teaching really is the long summer day in July where nothing is time sensitive.
My good friend, Stacy the English Teacher, came in and helped me sort out of my tired brain when the things I had to organize for Friday just weren't making sense. She could tell. We've gotten into a pattern of knowing when I need to do something concrete and the abstract side of my mind just won't stop getting in the way. Yesterday she literally said, 'Is there anything I can do for you in a concrete way that would help you sort anything out?' And I knew exactly what she was talking about. And she knew that I knew that she knew. (Thanks, friend.)
T-minus....
4 more days of school
6 more days until the D.C. trip
10 days until my summer break begins
I've been very calm and unaltered about the end of school....something I've deliberately practiced in order to make it to the end and not flake out as a teacher. I HAVE to be diligent about their grades. But today is the last big push. If I can grade like an efficient maniac today, I feel like I'll be golden. I've been living like this....'every minute counts, but I'm still praying and still calm' for a long time, and it seems like I'll never stop living like this.
'The third time is the charm' is technically true when I consider leading the trip. I've been to D.C. 4 times in the last few years, but the first time, I got sick. Really, altogether digustingly sick....I couldn't go to school for four days after the trip. I had pink eye and maybe some bronchitis? Certain elements of that trip are a little hazy, but really, the morning we woke up at 3:00 am to meet luggage and parents and kids at school, the pit in my stomach was gone. 
