Put a fork in me...

As of Friday, December 18 at 1:20 p.m., I am officially on vacation. For two weeks. And instead of elation, I feel...more....shocked than anything else. This is the big one, the mid-year break every teacher lives for throughout the fall months; the re-set button that makes January-March (or April) possible for us. It's the carrot that's dangled in front of us starting on the first day of school. We work, we plan, we teach, we review, all with the promise of Christmas Break just a few months, weeks, days down the road.
Let me tell you that this year, those last few days felt like years. Even with fun Christmas-y things going on, Friday dragged its feet and dug in its heels. So when that bell rang on Friday afternoon, and the sounds of kids running for their lives away from their classrooms reached my ears, I just stood there in puzzled silence. What? It's done? Now I'm on vacation? Really? I'm not going to wake up to my alarm Monday morning and find that I still have one more week to go?
And then I stopped mid-task. The stack of copies that needed to be sorted and stapled was plopped down on my desk, my computer shut down, and I'm pretty sure that I was in my car and out of the parking lot before about half of the students in the school had even made it out of their classrooms.

Peace out, yo!