winding down

Time is a crazy thing. Slow. Slow. Quick, quick, slow.

Some days seem to fly, others crawl by at a snail's pace. A single 50-minute period of a horrific day of substitute teaching could last seemingly forever. Other days you really have to be careful not to blink--or the next thing you know, an entire week will go by, leaving you gaping in the dust.

A 12-week maternity leave has moments that are as hectic as a rough week of substitute teaching, or as sedate and leisurely as a sick day spent in bed watching movies. Often you get both in the same day, swinging like a pendulum between frantic problem-solving induced by shrieking howls, and other times basking in the afterglow of a milky-faced grin. It's surreal enough in the beginning that it has the feel of Groundhog Day, where you are literally doing the same thing again and again and again, day after day. The days themselves blur together--into a mushy kind of Monthurswedfrisunday. Around here we've escaped from the clutches of linear time that hold the rest of the world prisoner, and made schedules irrelevant. Everyday is a no-day. A declaration of independence from calendars and clocks. A single moment. An eternity. A space between time.

Nevertheless, to bring it all back down to earth, this is my second-to-last week off, and the last week before we introduce the trials and tribulations of daycare. Hard to say who will have the harder time adjusting...adjusting back to imposed schedules, calendars, time-tables, clocks, timers, and all of the trappings of life ticking away. I both crave and abhor this...

tick tick tick...