A Reluctant Adult

My feet ache, my laundry is piling up, and there are notebook fringies stuck in my living room carpet. School has officially started. Class begins at 7:30am in my district, which means that I have to be there at 7:00. Anyone who has taught knows that half an hour is simply not enough time to prepare your room or your mental health for dealing with nearly 200 teenagers. So, I arrive at 6:30am. That means I leave my house between 5:30 and 6:00. It takes me an hour to get ready...so I'll let you do the math for my wake-up time. It hurts me too much to say it. By the time I crawl back into my house at 6:00pm, I barely have the energy to change into my pajamas, much less eat, clean, correct papers, or talk to people. But you see, I don't mind not eating much--I've lost a lot of weight in the past six months as a result--and I'm okay with a fine layer of dust over everything in my house--I'm allergy free--and most of all, I really don't care when they get their pa...

I used to have a cell phone. It was apple green with a little sliding keyboard, a rather antiquated screen, and an alarm that woke me up everyday at 5am. Often I'd get to my car after work only to realize I'd left it on my desk; I would not make the 50 yard trek back to my room. Sometimes I went entire weekends without knowing, or caring, where it was. I say was because in May my husband decided we needed new phones. On the way in the store, I looked my husband in the eye and said firmly, "We do not need data plans. No one needs to have the internet that close to them that often." Two hours later, we left the store, my husband pocketing his new Blackberry while I lovingly cradled my Palm Pixie Touch--with a data plan. The world as I had known it was over. Prior to my fancy smart phone, I checked email once every week or so, Facebook roughly once a month, and sent approximately one text a day: a short message telling my husband I had arrived at work safely. I calle...