eyeing relief.

I have this thing for vacations. Getaways. Time spent away from routine; monotony, even. I typically, by mid-October, feel some sense of entitlement to a well-deserved and hard-fought for few days away.

Hard-fought for, you say?

In so few words, I'd quite revel in the privilege of spelling it out in the clearest, most obvious form of English that I can: I specialize in "crowd control." Plainly, I teach kids.

I'm a glorified babysitter. An architect of character. An attitude connoisseur. A retriever. A potty trainer. A maid. An interpreter of all things gibberish, outlandish, and Aramaic. A well-oiled thank you card machine. A bodyguard. A punching bag. A fixer of the broken. An excavator of lost socks, dropped plastic spoons, and misplaced glue sticks. I console. I break up bickerers. I wipe tears and runny noses. I endure more knock-knock jokes in a day than you can fathom. I chase bugs of the invisible variety. Amphibians, too. I apprehensively chase bugs of the not-so-invisible variety. I discipline. I perform etiquette miracles. I parent. I parent. I parent.

But, in even fewer words, I adore my job with a consumable passion. Albeit, it drives me to this innate notion of deserved time-off, it's ideal. Simply, ideal. However, strategically, the month of November certainly tends to these vacation woes of mine. Genuinely, this lady will ever-so fondly greet Election Day, Veteran's Day, and gratefully, Thanksgiving with warmly open arms.