How quickly we forget...

It has been 4 weeks since I stopped working and I'm amazed at how quickly the realities of everyday life at home have pushed everything else out of my mind. Amazed, and a little discouraged if I'm honest. I love my children and still believe I made the right choice in staying home, but already miss the intellectual stimulation of work. I also miss feeling like I have something interesting to add to conversations. My current repertoire consists largely of statements like "stop touching your brother," "that is not a toy, put it down," and the ever popular "because I said so."

I am not in a funk, however, because I made, in retrospect, the brilliant decision to volunteer for an organization that works with charter schools in the city. They do great work and it will be a wonderful opportunity to stay intellectually engaged and hopefully also will prove a bonus on my resume when I do go back to teaching. I'm meeting with the head honcho in a couple of weeks so will have some idea of how I'll be helping out after that. The benefit of volunteer work is that people are only to happy to let you do all kinds of cool and intellectually-stimulating things as long as they don't have to pay you anything.

I'm also very lucky in that volunteering at my son's school is not, for me, a substitute for work but actually just another way to get an education fix. I met with the principal yesterday and she was pretty open to my helping out however I can. Time in the boys' classrooms and on field trips will be great, but I'm also hoping to help out with testing individual students and maybe even try to organize some time with small groups of students, either for intensive support or enrichment. We'll see how much they let me get away with.

All of this means that I am able to recognize my current brain-as-mush state and not freak out too much since I look forward to a Fall full of opportunities to remember that I am, in fact, a reasonably intelligent person with skills and knowledge to offer to society. So let the summer of sloth continue.

Now, where did I put that murder mystery?