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I have started the countdown to summer. I am living for the weekends. I am over my five a.m. wake up call. I am bored of my daily trip to Dunkin' Donuts, where the young woman with the Russian accent must know me by now. Large vanilla coffee, milk and two Sweet-n-lows, a bottle of water, plain wheat bagel.

I fantasize only about sleeping late, getting up when the sun is out, feeling slothful for getting out of bed at 8 o'clock in the morning, the time when I am usually at my classroom door, greeting the class. Please take your seat, take out your independent reading books, remember, you get a plus if you do what you're supposed to.

Kids love pluses.

I'm going back to a full teaching load in the fall. No more of this half teacher/half coach nonsense. All it took was a reminder to my principal that I am a really good teacher. I will blow my own horn when I absolutely have to. I can get hired in another school. That, and the reminder that I really do suck at this coach thing. He does not agree with that part. In my head, I was desperate and pleading, please, I can't do it anymore, I just can't. I don't know what I'll do if I have to do this next year.

I'm not teaching summer school this year. I have taught every summer since 1999. I don't know what I am going to do with myself. Well, that's not true. I am going to take advantage of being a professor's wife and take a class at his college. Something fun, not teaching related. I am going to morph into a scary Martha Stewart type person and garden and do the many little projects around the money pit. I am going to sleep, sleep, sleep and take photographs and maybe paint again, even though I once took a painting class and the instructor all but said that I sucked. I don't care. I have chosen, finally, to be honest about myself and what I am good at and the fact that I'm not really all that smart. I need to learn to do what I want to do, without any expectation of competence. At least when I'm not getting paid

I love anonymity.