Today is the first day of vacation.

I have tons of stuff that I want to get done here.

I ripped the place apart looking for something last Saturday and I’ve made no attempt to put it back together. I have a mountain laundry that will require a couple of hours at the laundromat. I still haven’t put away the winter clothes and unearthed the summer stuff (of course the fact that the temperatures have been in the fifties for the last couple of weeks have prevented me from having faith that I’ll ever really need the summer clothes.) There are tons of dishes in the kitchen sink that need to get loaded into the dishwasher, but I can’t do that until I get the clean dishes OUT of the dishwasher.

The dust is so thick on some surfaces that I could write a novel. The stuff I brought home from school is just tossed in a heap on the floor. I haven’t even opened the door to the second bedroom in weeks because I know there isn’t the slightest chance that I could walk in there, the floor is so covered with stuff that I’ve just tossed in there and not even bothered to put away.

Then there are the stacks of books and magazines. Everywhere. They own the place. The thing is that I just can’t bring myself to get rid of the ones that I’ve read, and there are hundreds that I have yet to read but that I want to get to in that ever-elusive "someday". I have this problem with hoarding books, because I keep on buying them and can’t find the time to read them. I don’t really know why I have this obsession, but I’ll never be able to stop. I know that for a fact.

I also have plants that need to get put into the window boxes and some seeds that I thought I’d toss in to see if I could get them to grow. Stuff like peppermint. Not that I want peppermint, but I though that it might smell good and be fun to try to grow.

And the point of all this? What did I get done today?

Nothing.

I drifted from thing to thing and put things in new piles, but nothing looks as if I made any effort at all. Now I didn’t make a huge effort, it was all minimal, but I sort of hoped that something might have looked better by the end of the day.

It was not to be.

What I’ve done is make a list of stuff that I’d like to accomplish, so I can’t start to feel some satisfaction once I complete one item and get to cross it off that list.

Let me tell you it’s a very long list!

I got a call today from the head of the technology department for the school system. ("I know it’s a Saturday and I’m sorry to call you at home, but if I can’t have a life you can’t have one either!") She asked me to attend a six hour workshop this Friday to finally get some work going on the school web pages. They’re paying twenty bucks an hour for us to attend.

I’m there.

That means that with three workshops and the week I’ll spend correcting the state assessments I’ll have made almost the equivalent of what I would have made spend the summer teaching.

I think I made the right choice. I’m far less worried about money now. Although I still am a bit concerned about too much free time.

I know I have all that stuff to do and all those books to read, but it still feels like a lot of unstructured time to me.

I made a connection with a person from my past.

I was watching the local PBS channel and there was the man who had been the principal of the high school I taught at ten years ago. He was welcoming the governor to his school system - he’s no longer a principal but the superintendent of another system. I really liked this man and was very close to him and his family, his two oldest children had lead roles in my musicals. So I did an internet search, found his e-mail address and sent him a note that I titled "a blast from the past". I got an answer the next morning that started "What a wonderful way to start my day! We think of you often and of the important part you played in our lives."

Isn’t that nice?

He told me what the family is doing, and it’s always a shock to realize that these "kids" are now in their thirties. I haven’t aged, so how come they have?

Tomorrow is Father’s Day, and today is the one month anniversary of my dad’s death. I wonder if I’ll ever stop thinking about it?