Feeling old

Is it bad when the weekend arrives and all I want to do when I get back from work is collapse on the couch and sleep? I miss the days when Friday night meant making plans and going out and having fun. Now all Friday night means to me is I can go to sleep early! I am so wiped from this week. I had a field trip with my seniors and 2 track meets this week. I didn't get back to the school from one of the meets until about 9:30. Add in a 40 minute commute home and you have a very long "hump day" on Wednesday. This week just felt super super long. It took forever just to get to Wednesday and I feel like I barely made it to Friday.

Now Friday is here and all I want to do is sleep. I just hate being this exhausted all the time. I want to do fun things on the weekend and learn how to play tennis with Kendra and go visit my grad school pals up in Charlottesville. By the end of the week I'm so exhausted and backlogged with grading and cleaning and laundry that I hardly ever leave my room. I'm only 26, but I feel so old!

Honestly, I can't figure out if I feel "old" or I just don't know what 26 feels like. I feel like it's a very diverse age and you can have young single people who still live it up on the weekends and people who are also married with kids. I get told all the time that "I'm still young" and should be out having fun, but maybe it's the fact that the only people I ever hang out with and see on a regular basis here are all married and/or have kids. I had my share of fun in and after college, but I've never been one for going out. I'm definitely attracted to a slower pace and lifestyle. Maybe that makes me boring, maybe it makes me old, I don't know.

Today I had a couple students come in off their lunch break to make up a test and I had my pathetic little teacher lunch out on the desk and I was reminded of a My So Called Life episode where Angela comments on how sad teachers' lives are and they zoom in on this frumpy middle-aged woman eating a tuna sandwich. When my kids came in and I took out my pathetic lunch I suddenly felt like that frumpy middle aged woman. I'm sure I look awful some days when I go into work. Most days I barely have time to run a comb through my hair nevertheless put on makeup. Lots of days I forget to eat breakfast and run out the door without taking a lunch. I end up eating school lunches or grabbing one of the frozen dinners I have stored up in the teacher's lounge. I have to remind myself that this whole 'being exhausted all the time' gig that comes with being a first year teacher is only temporary. Next year HAS to be better than this year and if I end up at a different school I don't know if coaching will be on my repertoire. As much as I love it, it is sucking the life out of me.

I miss blogging and wish I could get to a computer more often. Until June 11 I think once a week will pretty much be par for the course for me.

Thankfully, we only have one meet next week and it is a varsity meet that I think we are hosting. We run a pretty quick meet and usually finish up in about 2 hours, which means I will hopefully be home before 8 PM. I start my SOL review next week, which is the 2 week review for the big Virginia state test. It will be stressful to review everything we have learned since August, but will be nice not to have to plan actual lessons anymore. SOL review is just drill, drill, drill, drill.

My Seniors have their prom this weekend and I was asked about 12 times today by my kids if I was going to be there. It's Saturday night and I've already been invited by my grad school friends to go up to Charlottesville and hang with them for the weekend so I am torn. I honestly would just like to stay here and do nothing. I get so lazy on the weekends it's not even funny. I think I will probably end up donning a dress and going to prom. I was flattered they asked me to attend. I figured they would want it to be "their" night and wouldn't want teachers anywhere within a 5 mile radius. The faculty sponsor for the seniors, the 12th grade English teacher who I conference with all the time about my kids, encouraged me to go. She will be there so who knows. Maybe I'll revisit my high school days and go hit up the prom for an hour or so. It will probably make me feel even older than ever!

Right now all I want to do is collapse on the couch though. I think before I do I may order Chinese and go pop in the "Brothers At War" DVD that I never finished from back in February. JC is going to a San Francisco Giants baseball game tonight, which he is super excited about. He's had a rough couple of weeks and didn't do as well on his speaking test this week as he wanted to so I'm happy he's going out and doing something fun. We've hardly talked this week at all, aside from a couple 5 minute phone calls and some texts and emails. I love talking to him and it is usually one of the highlights of my day, but twice this week he called and I was already passed out and slept right through it. He left me a super sweet voicemail and I replied the next day with an email. And that's just how we roll. I know he's thinking about me. He know I'm thinking about him. We just have to focus on our careers right now so we're making good decisions and focusing on our studies. Do I hate that I'm so busy? Yes. Do I know there is an end in sight? Absolutely. The end of the school year is now only 7 weeks away!

And I'll see him soon enough and we'll have an awesome time tog ether this summer. I thought these weeks after our spring break together would be so painful and, no doubt, the first one back was. But we're back into the old routine now. We set aside time on the weekend to "be together" on Skype. We have our dinner dates. We email during the day. It's all good. Whether we have 2 months left of it or 12 more, we can kick this long-distance thing in the butt. Of that I am confident.

And on that note, I'm going to go order my crab rangoons, egg drop soup and Kung Pao chicken. Ah, Friday....