My Twice Baked Potato

When you’re a teacher, this time of year means your summer is almost over. Your mind shifts to classroom set up and furniture configuration. You focus on research and strategies instead of  beach reads and swimming.

Some teachers I know, thought about school throughout the summer months. They search Pinterest for science notebooking ideas instead of water fun and sangria recipes.

I guess I’ve been living in summer limbo.

We homeschooled consistently until my mother’s accident. Things stopped at that point.

Luckily, we’d been so thorough we were already done with social studies, math and most of science.

Even though my TBP reads close to an hour a day, for the last three weeks I haven’t been available for cool experiments and think outside the box activities. I feel some guilt about the fact that he has spent more time playing video games than he should and now it’s much harder to reel it back in but…

You do what you can and you give yourself a break.

It wouldn’t be accurate to say my mother’s accident was the only distraction.

My fiction writing took on a life of its own. Attending the PNWA conference in July, meeting with a great writing mentor, and getting requests for my manuscript was energizing and invigorating and tiring at times.

Today, was an excellent day. I got up very early and sent off six submissions that were the requests I’d received.

I felt so much lighter when a few hours later, I was done with this. Just when I was celebrating with my family and morning coffee, I got even better news.

My mother’s team of doctors shared that her white blood cell count had dropped significantly. This indicated her infection was improving and she was indeed getting better.

Her nurses call her determined and unbelievable. A mountain climber.

Although summer hasn’t been lazy like a lemonade commercial, there’s been a lot of learning, growth & accomplishments.