brand new pencils, brand new books

It seems to me that the things I like most about school are still the same as when I was a child. I loved the school supply shopping and going to the library. All the new pencils and crayons and shiny notebooks. Packages of college ruled notebook paper. The calculator they made you buy for math class...we always wished that $70 bucks could go to clothes.

I still get excited about school supplies, ordering labels for the labelmaker, and colored copy paper and the new kind of white out that rolls off in a strip. The new Sharpie pen, which I like how it writes, but not how it feels in my hand as it writes, so overall, a bust. As the librarian, I also get to shop for new books and most of the time I get to read them first. That's certainly a joy of my job. Books that someone else is paying for!

As an adult returning to school, this week has been filled with occasional trips to the soda machine, buying Cheerwine. For those of you not in North or South Carolina, Cheerwine is a regional soda, somewhere between Dr.Pepper and a real cherry soda. It's great. It's caffeinated, which has been my friend this week, when getting up early has been a stuggle.

It's good stuff. And if you ever get over this way, try it out. I think you either like it or hate it, but it's certainly worth it to taste.

The thing that occurs to me this week, is that except for one summer, I have always gone back to work in the fall. My life has revolved around school. I've never had another career, one that required me to work all year round and take two weeks of vacation. What is it like to take two weeks of vacation in February? I mean, I know that added all up I get about 12 weeks of vacation, way more than any other career, but it's time that I don't get to choose. What would it be like to take a trip to Disney in October, when it isn't so hot, because that's when I wanted to go. Such freedom, I think.

Anyway, my original point to this was that I like the planning of the school year. The preparing and the organizing and the decorating. It's too bad that part is so short!