In which I'd rather be coloring

A friend of mine said recently that she missed my blog, but that she assumed that all was well in my universe if I wasn't writing much. This is mostly true.  The good news, to all of you first years in the dreaded pre-Valentine's amp up, is that on this side of year two, things really are easier.  The day to day functions of being a teacher have become second nature.  You've learned to delegate irritating tasks to children who find them fascinating (alphabetizing as reward, who knew?) . You've, theoretically, created some external human life that distracts from you from the normal humdrum nature of the workaday existence known as adulthood.  Yes,  you'll have to survive the hormone-laced chocolate fueled insanity that is Valentine's (yes I still maintain that it is the worst of teacher holidays..., http://katb.teachforus.org/2012/10/21/in-which-there-are-nine-weeks/), but life, in general, is simpler than it used to be. Sadly, or perhaps happily, this slow acquisition of basic competency in your job also comes along with the return of Senioritis, a plague you thought you left behind in college.  Even knowing that I'm staying in the classroom, even acknowledging that this is now a Career and not a Thing That I Did After Graduation, I still find myself haunted by the senior slack.  I don't necessarily WANT to do nothing, and yet, motivation is an increasingly rare bird in my work hours. OH THERE IT IS-   Nope, flew out the window again. Here's an illustration of my loopiness.  Like a mostly normal human, I sleep in on the weekends.  By sleep in, I mean I get up at 7 (rather than 5) and do things.  This morning, I've been sitting at my desk grading tests, crunching data, doing all of that not all fun stuff.  At some point, I learned over to drop a completed pile on the floor (I should revise that - saying a completed pile implies that there were multiple completed piles.  This, clearly, was the first.  I told you I'm unmotivated...)  As I straightened up, I caught a glimpse of an old coloring book on my book shelf.  This was given to me by a dear friend during our senior year of college, and was the source of some happy hours of communal coloring while I should have been writing thesis drafts.  I stared at it, and spent a good minute, sixty solid seconds, pondering if it was worth getting in the car, driving to school, and finding my crayons in order to spend the rest of the day creating Works of Art. Then I decided that would be pretty dumb, and that instead I should procrastinate by writing this post. This is a curious time of year, far enough from the Dreaded State Test that hysteria has not yet blanketed us completely, but close enough that it creeps into everything we do/say/plan/expect from kids.  And furthermore, Christmas is a sad little blinking twinkly light in the past, while Spring Break is many many many Hawaiian shirts away.  Worse yet, it's a St. Louis February where the temperature fluctuates from 9 to 68 in the space of three days.  The kids feel blah, I feel blah, we're all just blah. Blah blah blah. Eventually I know the days on the calendar will start to fly again, and that work will feel productive again, and that I'll read this in May and think GOLLY GEE WILLIKERS WHERE DID TIME GO? For now though, I think I'll pull the hood up on my sweatshirt, embrace the Senioritis, and relax.