I’m one regular class away from the finish line. All I have left to do is finish grading essays and hand those back, then breeze through the 20th century (Home Rule! WWI! 1916 Rising! Treaty! Civil War! Free State! Mid-century torpor! The Troubles! Good Friday! Celtic Tiger! Woo hoo!) and get them to think deep thoughts about history and memory on Wednesday. Friday I’ll throw a stack of blue books at them at 1:45 and slink off to a corner to read something fun-ish while they wail and gnash their teeth and rend their garments, and hopefully write several pages’ worth of gradeable material in the time allotted for exams. I’ll grade the exams later that afternoon, record their final grades, and then my head will probably explode with glee at having my life returned to me.
There are so many things I want to do, I can’t even think where to start. Of course I’ll most likely transition right into 8-hour days writing, but those little gems of free time at the ends of days and on weekends–that’s what I’m looking forward to most. I’m dying to start rehabbing windows inside and out; finishing that quilt of my great-grandmother’s that Mom sent me home with last time we visited; watching Netflixed movies and TV shows with Spouse after dinner; baking all kinds of assorted treats and trying out the pasta roller attachment on my new KitchenAid; reading novels instead of textbooks every night before bed; listening to music while I work (I simply can’t read texts and write lectures with music in the background); reorganizing the piles upon piles of books in the office; contemplating an assault on Mt. Everest… The possibilities for unscheduled bits of the day now seem endless, when I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of an unscheduled bit of the day since May.
I simply can’t wait.
