Well, I'm kinda-sorta on my "summer vacation" (such as it is; my summer classes start up on June 4). I'm in the midst of doing some research right now so my posting schedule's thrown off a little. (And in two days I go on a short vacation).

I am getting some stuff worked on. I'm almost done with the first Miranda sock. And I planted my garden with tomatoes and some flowers (so I'll have to get out the timers so that the sprinklers will go on and off while I'm gone to keep them alive).

I also completed an amigurumi from a Roxycraft pattern. Good pattern, just don't like the company's tagline ("patterns that don't suck.")

No pictures - my camera's "resting up" to take pictures of lichens today.


*****

It's funny how easily I can slip back into a mood...how easily I can be reminded of things from my past. Driving out to the field site yesterday, early in the morning - I took an alternate route, one one of my students told me about. It's through a formerly-rural area that's slowly turning into the "rich" end of town (when I drove the class as a whole out that way, some of the students marveled that there were people in our little town who apparently had enough money to throw away on giant, four-story fake chateaux. [And while I don't doubt that there ARE, I still look at these houses in wonder: are they like museums inside? do the people have an army of cleaning-ladies to keep the place up? I would not feel comfortable in a house like that; just wasn't raised that way.])

But I drove out alone yesterday and focused more on the quality of the light and the greenness around me than the execrecenses of conspicuous consumption.

And it reminded me of the beginnings of summer vacations of my childhood...of that feeling of expectation when you stepped off the bus on the Very Last Day of school (always a half-day in my district). The way the summer opened up in front of you - it was like you had forever ahead of you, that school would never start up again, that you were free to do everything you wanted to.

Usually within a couple weeks I was looking for things to do; when I got older (junior high and high school) I looked for volunteer work or took enrichment classes (whatever was available) just to have something to do.

But that first day - those first few days - were so sweet: going to sign up for the library summer-book club (which, as I've said before, I continued to do LONG AFTER I was the age where it ceased to be "cool." Which, sadly, was about 9 or 10 in my town...) Doing craft projects. Roaming around outside. Even the novelty of watching television in the middle of the day (a novelty which cooled quickly; we had, I think, five channels and only two of them - the PBS affiliate and the independent channel (43, I think it was?) out of Cleveland - that showed any kind of programs I found at all entertaining.

But I still get a little bit of that feeling again: the feeling of being freed from a schedule that you'd grown a bit weary of, the opportunity to sleep a little bit later in the mornings and spend the afternoon doing craft stuff.

****

Except this afternoon; I need to clean up the house and arrange for the mail to be held and all that kind of stuff. All of the little grown-up duties that you have to do in order to be ready to go on vacation.

Oh, and laundry. I'll need to do some laundry too.