Short on money, long on time

Yesterday was my last day of class for...who knows how long? Which meant that today was my first day in a while with no pressing reason to leave the house (though, of course, I found a non-pressing reason). It wasn't my last day of working, unfortunately, because there are still research essays and finals to be graded, but the finals come in tomorrow and the grades have to be submitted shortly thereafter so things really will be done soon. And then I have to clean out my office, turn in my keys, ID, and parking pass, and get all my benefits transferred over to the husband's account smoothly (this will the hardest part of the whole transition and the part over which I have the least control--yay!). And THEN, I really will be done.

So is now the time for a bittersweet look back at teaching more or less full time for the past 11 years? Nope, the situation is still "too new" as my little brother once said about all things Finnish, so I don't have the distance I need to comment thoughtfully. Which won't stop me from sharing some off the cuff observations from the vantage point of one day away from school:

--entertaining a 6 month old for even three more hours a day is exponentially more work than teaching college students for that same amount of time.

--the cleanliness of my house will decline rapidly now that the nanny is no longer coming over every week day, if today's mess is any indication. (thank goodness seminary starts soon so I can keep things more or less under control for our daily visitors.)

--J doesn't like carrots (which has nothing to do with no longer teaching, but it's something we discovered on our first full day together in a while. and by "discovered" I mean he spit and sneezed them back at and on me this morning.)

--I'm looking forward to cleaning out my office and transferring everything to my home office but not looking forward to losing my parking pass. Free parking in downtown Charleston is gold, even if my parking garage is periodically partially under water courtesy of Charleston's "very rare" floods.

--I really hate grading, particularly these things at the end. In truth, we know how these students have done before we start reading the essays, with very few exceptions. But we have to actually read since it's the ethical thing to do, so we plod along, give C's where we knew we would, get an occasional bright moment of an A, sigh repeatedly at the errors STILL going on, and have the eternal "is it me or is it them?" conversation in our heads until we finally, finally finish and MOVE ON, for real this time!