*UPDATED*
Aw, summer vacation. A time both students and teachers dream of. A time when kids get outdoors more (hopefully), and probably lose about 75% of the knowledge they actually learned during the school year. But who cares, they’re experiencing life, man.

Summer vacation. A time when teachers become people again and compose a lengthy and ambitious to-do list, but probably don’t actually start tackling it until about a week before school starts up again. But who cares, this is vacation, a time to relax, man.

This morning, as I was lying in bed, enjoying the first morning of my vacation, envisioning all that I will* accomplish this summer, Mr. Art Teacher commented, “I wish I had summers off.” My reply, as always, “You should have become a teacher.” And his response, as always, “No way.” And this is why he earns twice what I do, despite his less superior education, but I digress.

My fear for this summer vacation is that boredom will set in. And set in quickly. It feels as if I haven’t had a responsibility-free summer in years. I remember as a kid looking forward to the summer, but quickly running out of things to do. I remember being bored nearly to tears (although I’m sure plenty of tears were involved). I would like a boredom-free summer this year, but I don’t anticipate that happening, despite my extensive to-do list (see below). I expect my ever expanding belly and my ever decreasing energy levels will have me lounging around more than I would like during the next eight weeks. I also have a sneaking suspicion that this little one is going to come early. I can’t explain why, it’s just a feeling I have, and the dreams I’ve been having lately sure as heck aren’t helping. Neither are the hiccups I’ve been feeling in my vagina. I’m crossing my fingers and hoping she holds out until at least her due date, if not longer. But again, I digress.

In preparation for my long, hopefully non-lazy days of summer, I present to you, my to-do list (in no particular order):

•  Travel to NY for a week to see family and friends
• Attend my baby shower 
• Attend a four-hour class (that I get paid for. And gives me re-certification points. Or something like that.)
• Refinish a crib
• Refinish a dresser
• Refinish a piece of furniture that I have no idea what to call it, but it has cubbies and should be really useful in the nursery. 
• Put together the nursery
• Decorate the nursery
• Do some baby shopping
• Clean the house (except the bathrooms. Mr. Art Teacher does those now. Voluntarily, I might add.)
• Update my other blogs
• Go to the farmer’s markets. Weekly
• Catch one more live concert. Or two
• See a few movies in the actual theater
• Go out to dinner. A lot
• Read
• Throw some pottery (for any non-art people out there, that means I’ll be creating pieces on a potter’s wheel, not actually throwing ceramic bowls against a wall or anything. Although there’s the potential for that to happen as well)
• Start the baby book
• Tackle some DIY nursery projects
• Nap
• Tour the hospital I’ll be delivering in
• Attend a doctor’s appointment. Or twenty
• Catch up on TV
• Hang out in the pool (fully equipped with a water gun filled with ice cold water to chase the obnoxious kids away with)
• Eat
• I can’t believe I forgot the most important item on my summer to-do list… GIVE BIRTH!!!

What exciting things are on your summer to-do list?

* Because I have ambition, man.** Ambition.
** Apparently summer vacation brings out the dude-speak in me.

I’ll never forget it. I was in elementary school, maybe third, maybe fourth grade, and my class had just arrived in the cafeteria. I remember being hungry. So hungry that my stomach hurt and I felt like I was going to vomit. And then I did. I vomited right there on the floor of the cafeteria. I was mortified. The kind of mortification that only comes from knowing you just allowed a typically un-witnessed (except maybe by your parents) bodily function to occur in a crowded public place while in the presence of not only your classmates, but most likely your current crush as well. I was so mortified, in fact, that the details of that moment are permanently etched in my memory.

I thought my day today was pretty rough, not for any particular reason, just the typical last-day-of-art-class routines, couldn’t-sleep-the-night-before pregnancy woes, and dealing with students who’d rather be outside in a pool than stuck in a stuffy classroom kind of day. At least I thought my day was pretty rough, until this afternoon that is, when a student (not mine. At least not at the time.) experienced a case of vicious, exploding diarrhea. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE HALLWAY. And it took a good hour for the custodial staff to get the hallway and the bathroom cleaned up. And I think it took just as long to coax the (freshly clothed) student to come out of the bathroom.

I mean, just imagine. Here we are in the last full week of school and some poor, unfortunate student of an undetermined grade level (at least to me) experiences an episode of exploding diarrhea in the 6th grade hallway, not more than ten feet from the bathroom. Could life be any more mortifying at that point? Thankfully for the student the sixth graders were elsewhere at the time, and the hallway was mostly clear of witnesses (aside from a reading teacher and three students testing in the pod who, despite the fact that they were in clear line of sight, saw nothing). But still. I hope for the students’ sake word doesn’t get out about it. Or at least if it does, he survives the last week of school and can hide away over the summer until the air is cleared, so-to-speak.

Bless the custodian who had to spend the good part of an hour cleaning that mess up. I swear, the custodial staff in our schools don’t get nearly as much credit as they should. If you haven’t thanked your custodial staff yet for the fabulous job they do during the school year, do it now. The messes they have to clean up would make most of us vomit (seriously guys, the smell in that hallway was gruesome).

Bless the sixth grade teacher who entered the boys’ bathroom to check on the student and try to coax him out. Of course, being the only male teacher in that wing of the school, he probably didn’t have much of a choice, but that couldn’t have been easy either.

And did I mention that the hallway the “accident” occurred in was also the hallway the art rooms are located in? So not only were the teachers in the pod re-routed, but so were three art classes. The students were definitely better sports about it than I was. There’s nothing worse than being 30 weeks pregnant and having to walk the entire length of the school (twice) and hike two sets of stairs (twice) to make a trip to the faculty bathroom that should have only required walking half the length of the school (twice) with no stairs.

Of course, the boy hiding away in the student bathroom might disagree with me on that one.